Looking for nurses: The relation between agency salience in job advertisements and the appeal of nursing for men
Abstract: In Sweden, nursing is strongly gender segregated. Additionally, there is a national nursing shortage. To target these issues simultaneously, the current study attempted to make nursing more appealing to men (and as a secondary aim, also to women) by making agency salient in a job advertisement in a sample of Swedish high school students (N = 242, 75 men). Agency salience was manipulated through removing occupational title and by describing the occupation in agentic terms (compared to communal terms). The manipulation aimed to positively affect job appeal by increasing men’s sense of belongingness as well as the perceived congruence between occupational goals and the goal affordance of nursing. Results showed that manipulating agency salience in a job advertisement did not make nursing more appealing to men or women (as compared to when communion was salient), nor did it affect belongingness or goal congruence. However, corroborating previous research, the study found that belongingness predicted appeal for men, and communal goal endorsement positively predicted the appeal of nursing regardless of gender (but women tended to have higher communal goal endorsement). The discussion contextualized these findings, suggesting that the manipulation may have lacked effect due to the strong connotations nursing has with femininity and low status, meaning it may be hard to increase job appeal with a wording manipulation alone. Nevertheless, the shown importance of belongingness and goal congruity for job appeal suggests that creating job advertisements that target these can be an efficient way to reduce the gender segregation and nursing shortage.
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