“A lot of families prefer females,” he said. “It’s sad because there’s a lot of patients who could stay at home longer if there were more males in the field. They need assistance like getting in and out of the bed, transferring to the shower — it’s a very physically demanding job.” He has also found that many patients, often older women because they live longer, enjoy having male home health aides to talk to.

Timothy Dage, who has worked for 25 years as a nurse and home health care aide with CareLinx, said he loses some prospective clients who would prefer a woman, but once a patient is in his care, the concern goes away. “There hasn’t been a patient who had me who ever requested going back to a female,” he said.

Professor Sharone said he interviewed recruiters for female-dominated jobs that are also expanding in this economy, such as administration. They were outspoken about their preference for women, he said. “Their rationale was that men are going to be bored in this job,” he said. “The man who is applying for this kind of job would be desperate. And you’re going to leave as soon as you get that other job.”

Men can also face resistance from their female peers. Jason Mott, an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, said some of his male students were teased by their female classmates. “They feel they need to really express their manhood, stressing the athletics they take part in,” he said.

Nursing offers a perplexing case study. In theory, nursing should appeal to men because it pays fairly good wages and is seen as a profession with a defined skill set. Yet just 10 percent of nurses are men, despite “Are You Man Enough … to Be a Nurse?” posters and other efforts to enlist men.

The hope is to focus on millennials who may be less bound by notions of traditional masculinity, said Brent MacWilliams, president of the American Assembly for Men in Nursing and a former commercial fisherman who is now an associate professor of nursing at Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He has seen more men apply to nursing schools, but he acknowledges his group will fall short of its goal of 20 percent male nurses by 2020.