Negative Effects of the Male Gender Role for ALL Health Care Professionals

     The characteristics & behaviors required to get into, survive, and do well in the health-care professions - regardless of one's gender - are much more in line with a traditional masculine, rather than feminine, gender role. These masculine characteristics & behaviors are antithetical to those of an ideal healer. As expected, research (summarized below) shows that this mismatch is unhealthy. Why wouldn't a competitive, striving, go-getter find herself living an unsatisfying divided life when she's supposed to enact the role of a nurturing healer?

 

     "Recent research indicates that men have poorer outcomes on a broad array of health and well-being variables when compared to women, including higher rates of inherited and behaviorally influenced disease, problematic development, educational difficulty, violence perpetration and victimization, addiction, unemployment and shorter life expectancy. A substantial body of evidence suggests that these differences are the result, at least in part, of maladaptive behaviors encouraged by a traditional view of the male gender role that is restrictive, harmful, and dysfunctional. 

     Research also suggests that traditionally bound masculine gender roles have a negative effect on psychological well-being especially when men with a traditional outlook are faced with changing societal roles and the ascendance of women at work and in society. The challenges some men experience as the result of changing gender roles, and their effect on well-being and life satisfaction, have been the focus of an increasing body of research. Social commentators have articulately described the difficulties that many men have in finding satisfaction as fathers, as coworkers, and as members of their communities in a world of changing gender norms."

     Burke CK, Maton KI, Mankowski ES, Anderson C. Healing men and community: predictors of outcome in a men's initiatory and support organization. Am J Community Psychol 2010; 45(1-2): 186-200.