What comes to your mind when you hear the word nurse? A lady donning a white dress who is referred to as ‘sister’ by patients and doctors alike. But are all nurses female? What about the male nurses? What are they referred to? These questions show a gender stereotype that the Indian Professional Nurses Association (IPNA) has decided to fight.
Their latest battle is to remove gender-based eligibility criteria from BSc (Honors) Nursing programme The association said while other courses of nursing accommodate both male and female students, only female students are eligible for BSc (Honors) nursing course in nursing colleges under the Central government at AIIMS, JIPMER and other institutes.
IPNA’s president Jiju P Joy said there is no valid reason behind this practice. “No reasonable objective being achieved by reserving a particular nursing programme for female students when other nursing courses are open for both male and female students. In fact, many other nursing colleges in India provide BSc (Honors) Nursing curse for both male and female students,” he stated.
According to IPNA, this practice is not just discriminatory but also unethical in many ways. “The outright denial to pursue the course has been a source of great disappointment and frustration for male students who aspire to pursue a career in nursing. In today’s world, gender should not be a determining factor for choosing a career,” Joy said.
According to Joy, both males and females have an equal potential to excel in the field of nursing, and their abilities should be recognised and nurtured. “This practice followed by the Central government/ university/ nursing colleges is a sheer violation of the right to equality enshrined under Articles 14, 18 & 23 of the Constitution of India and deserves to be declared as unconstitutional,” Joy said.
Siju, joint secretary, IPNA asked, “How can we allow this when tens of thousands of male students choose nursing as a profession and come forward to do so?” According to Siju, this is absolutely discriminatory. “It also ignores the fact that men can be equally competent, caring and skilled as women in providing nursing care to patients,” Siju said.