Students at Ohio University and other Ohio colleges are blurring the lines between male and female occupations by entering majors traditionally reserved for the opposite sex.
William Smith of OU's Office of Institutional Equity said some majors, such as nursing and education, are female-dominated, while others, mainly engineering, math and physical sciences, are male-dominated. He said OU tries to attract women into male majors by creating a culture and an environment that is more supportive of their presence
not just numbers.
Laquetta Cortner is the minority women and outreach programs coordinator at the Russ College of Engineering and Technology, the only college at OU to have such a position. Her job consists of coordinating summer outreach programs for high school students, one of which - but I think OU particularly the engineering school
is doing a very good job attracting women and minorities to engineering, Cortner said.
Conversely, Emily Harman, interim director of the OU School of Nursing, said the school makes no special efforts to attract men to nursing.
We just recruit nurses in general
men and women
Harman said.
Smith agreed with this policy, saying men's career choices are limited only by personal preference, while women have historically been denied access to certain occupations based on their sex.
Harman said there are not many men studying nursing at OU, and those that do are mostly enrolled in advanced degree programs. She said there have always been a few men enrolled in nursing, but the numbers have increased.
Nenna Davis, of the college's public safety service school, said in the past five years, there have been several times when no women were enrolled in that program. She said there are currently 170 men and 14 women enrolled in the college's fire and emergency services program, and 102 men and 28 women enrolled in the police science program.
Alex Temple is a nursing student at Cincinnati State College. He has met many people since entering nursing school, all of whom have been women, but he thinks he is not the only guy in the program.
He said many people are taken aback or curious when they find out what he does, often asking why he is becoming a nurse instead of a doctor, but he does not experience overt discrimination based on his sex. He said he hopes that in the future, people can look past society's expectations about male nurses.
It would be a job for just people -
Temple said.
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