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Comment by guzfip | Hacker News Reader

- nursing: I don’t want to work 60-70 hours a week at your horrific body shop of a PE asset

- teaching: unruly kids. Bully’s get protected and those who stand up get punished. There’s some level of societal distrust of men around children not their own.

- social work: you’re exposed to some of the worst most horrific side of society constantly for peanut pay. You’re constantly in a position where you want to help people, but are constrained by things far outside your power.

Yeah I don’t care how “masculine” you try to frame them, just not interested.

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That's a shallow analysis. These reasons (which are very reasonable) aren't inherently gendered, yet don't seem to deter women as they make up something like 80-90% of these jobs, they're not "just not interested".

So... seems like gender _does_ have something to do with that? Maybe just maybe more women gravitate towards these roles because these roles are associated with traditionally-feminine values (care, empathy, nurture)?

Maybe you're "just not interested" because as a man, you've been educated with traditionally-masculine values (strength? protection? power?), and if you had grown up in an environment where these roles are associated to these values, you'd be potentially-interested in them despite their obvious downsides

Men are also often the primary breadwinners in families, so they feel the need to take a higher paying job. In families where the husband's job pays well, the wife's career can be decided by personal fulfillment. Teachers are respected (but not paid well), nurses are respected and can earn a good amount, and social work is a very self-fulfilling role (I don't think society holds them in esteem more than other professionals).

If we want men to take up certain roles, we need to pay more. That's the simplicity of capitalism and free markets. We bend ourselves into knots trying to find clever and (maybe) cheaper solutions to thorny problems.

Teachers paid well in some places, I checked it recently and in our school district(Seattle area) on average elementary school teacher makes 120-140k.

> If we want men to take up certain roles, we need to pay more.

Why is it only now, when employment rates are seemingly a problem for men, that we need to pay more in these professions to attract men that might otherwise not have considered them? Why shouldn't we have paid more earlier?

The framing of the article and discussion around it is a little bizarre to me because it ignores the decades or longer of (American) society effectively pushing women into industries like education or nursing and subsequently devaluing them.

I don't quite understand why society has to step in and try to fix this for men who are feeling insecure about their job options while simultaneously actively avoiding trying to help women and minorities.

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