Has Nursing Always Been Female Dominated Like Today (90+%)?

Question

In the United States, 92% of nurses are female, but I can't seem to find any data about male nursing 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago, even though nursing has been around a while. Is there any historic data of gender and nursing from 50-100 years ago as a comparative point?

Answer 1

Yes. Linked below is a National Institute of Health study, Counting Nurses: The Power of Historical Census Data. As the paper explains:

"Numbers of men and women who identified themselves as “professional nurses” exploded in the early decades of the twentieth century: from 10,000 in 1900; to 74,000 in 1910; to 117,000 in 1920; to 230,000 in 1930 (Table 1). The overwhelming majority of these individuals were white women. But despite the gendered images, it was not until the 1930s that professional nursing actually became almost exclusively women’s work. Women represented 91% of all such nurses in 1900, and their proportionate representation rose through the succeeding decades until, by 1930, they represented 98% of all professional nurses. And despite the racial images it was not until the 1930s that professional nursing became almost exclusively white women’s work. White women represented 89% of all women who identified as professional nurses in 1900; and by 1930 they represented 95% of all nurses – a percentage that dropped only to 94% for the 1940 and 1950 census years"

Study:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2756047/pdf/nihms135418.pdf