Men are not allowed to be nurses in Nepal, which was most likely the source of people’s confusion as to gender. There was a period of time when men were allowed to go to nursing school, but this is now officially illegal in Nepal. What I have seen in Nepali culture is a nearly complete divide between the parallel universes of men and women. It is said that nursing requires a “caring behavior”. Caring behavior is not a feminine nature, it is nature of human beings. It’s not innate to women, I have met plenty of uncaring women who were nurses. I also believe that caring behavior can be non-gender based, and that it’s okay for guys to develop a form of “caring” that reflects being a guy. The nursing occupation is generally stereotyped as feminine, because of the job history and also qualities of a typical nurse. Nurses are expected to be caring, gentle, and compassionate, qualities stereotyped as female and rejected by males. In this way, male nurses have to break this barrier and in doing so are often generalized as feminine. You can be a male nurse and not be effeminate. I think public perception is still that it is a female occupation, which sometimes makes it hard for men to say: “I’m going into nursing.” In some ways I think the public is still unsure what it wants from nurses – half still think of a nurse as the subject of an erotic fantasy and the other half want to see someone with a stethoscope around their neck. Even those men going into a supposedly ‘more masculine’ area of the profession admit that their career choice has sometimes raised eyebrows and this can be a barrier that prevents men from entering the profession. On the heels of Nursing’s Day, it would not be biased if I talk about the nursing profession in Nepal where more than 99 percent of nurses are female. I wonder why almost all nursing professionals are women. Is the nursing service more challenging for males? Is this service a mid-level profession where there is no decision-making power but a lot of responsibility? Is this profession all about caring which people do not value? Or is it all about gender which determines that taking care of people is a role or a job for females only? In this gender-friendly age, I find it relevant to discuss the nursing profession that is still being thought of as a women’s profession. Nurses are one of the largest groups of professionals working in the healthcare system. They play a very important role, from the time of a patient’s admission to their discharge. Their responsibilities include orientation, meeting all types of needs, especially biological and emotional, explaining rights to a patient, maintaining confidentiality, taking informed consent and following many other roles. When everything is going well at the hospital, there is no problem in the role of a nurse. But when something goes wrong, fingers are immediately pointed at nurses. Why? Because a nurse does not have authority but responsibility. How can there be a responsibility without authority? This is because nurses are females and females do not have a voice. Even if they have a voice, there is nobody to listen to them. And even if there is somebody to listen to them, there is nobody to lend support. This is the reality experienced by all nurses to some degree. If your sister, mother, daughter or wife is engaged in this profession, you may have realized what nurses have to do. She holds her bladder for a patient in pain, she skips her own medicine to administer medication to a patient, she puts off breastfeeding her baby to feed a newborn and she forgoes her family during festivals. Can a male make such sacrifices? If yes, why don’t they try to enter the nursing profession? While raising this question, I have to state that I know there have been almost four batches of male nurses in Nepal. But for some unknown reason, seats for male nurses were removed since 1990. If you believe in gender equality, that women can be as stronger as society perceive men, why can’t men be as caring as society perceive women? I believe that nursing profession in Nepal must remove its gender bias-ness and allow students to enroll in it regardless of their gender identities.