Take a seat and pour yourself a stiff drink, because – in an event that feels as rare as Halley’s Comet passing – men are actually set to benefit from an equality programme.

Joyously, the enlightened sorts at Coventry University are tackling the paucity of men in nursing by launching a new boys-only bursary to coax men into the profession.

Men account for just 10 per cent of the total nursing students at UK universities. Last year, 2,800 men were accepted onto a course, compared with 26,000 women.

Indeed, nursing has the biggest gender gap of all courses, and it has grown by almost 20 per cent since 2012.

So with a supreme application of politically-correct-free logic, Coventry is launching a fund of £30,000 to help 10 men in subjects where they are grossly under-represented, including nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and midwifery.

Funded by the National Express Foundation Group, – yes, the coach people – the bursary will give 10 men £1,000 in each year of their degree.

While we are well used to a tsunami of government-backed, ticker-tape, positive action programmes to encourage women into 'male' areas such as STEM and engineering, this is believed to be a UK-first for men.

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First, hats off to Coventry Uni and National Express, who are stepping in where even central government fears to tread thanks to silly accusations of sexism (memo to critics: helping men does not harm women, nor vice-versa).

This brilliant bursary cannot come a moment too soon. Men are now a minority on the majority of British university campuses. Women outnumber men on 2/3 of all courses, with 60,000 more women now undergraduates, an all-time record gender gap that has almost doubled since 2007.

At current rates, girls born in 2017 are 75pc more likely to attend uni in the future than men.

Despite this, Mary Curnock Cook, the former Ucas chief executive, has consistently highlighted a “deafening policy silence” on the issue.

Step forward Rob James, Academic Dean for the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at Coventry University, and chair of its Athena SWAN committee for gender equality, who says, “We support all initiatives taking positive action to address unequal gender representation in any subject discipline, and this bursary does so across healthcare training.

“While there’s lots being done nationally – and at Coventry – to encourage women into sciences and engineering, we hope this new initiative will lead the way in addressing the persistent low proportion of men working in many healthcare professions.”

Hallelujah to that! And while this bursary might raise certain heckles in the equality movement, it is 100pc legally watertight.

Says James Woodward, Coventry University’s Deputy Director Media and External Affairs at, “Under the Equality Act, universities are permitted action which enables or encourages people with a protected characteristic, such as sex, to participate where they may be under-represented by means of a ‘positive action measure’.

“The aim of this scholarship is to directly alleviate this level of under-representation. So it meets the criteria as a positive action measure”.

This should send out a flare to men’s campaigners and policy makers globally: positive action programmes to help men when they are under-represented are legal, healthy and desperately needed.

Now let’s see the same in psychology, which has the second biggest gender divide, followed by social work and education.

Men are three times more likely to kill themselves than women – suicide is the biggest killer of British men aged under 45. And health care professionals like my colleague Dr John Barry at University College London tell me that one of the biggest barriers that puts men off seeking help is that there are not enough people like them – ie other men – in the profession.

Could more male psychologists help save men’s lives? What have we got to lose by introducing men’s bursaries in psychology, too?

Male teachers are more likely to teach secondary than primary age groups

Add to that list primary school teaching, where men make up a mere 11pc of the profession and where boys (especially poor, white ones) are bottom of the education ladder from reception onwards.

Colin Harrison is one of just two men in his year on the Learning Disabilities Nursing BSc at Coventry. He told me that tackling stereotypes is the first step to address the balance and remove the stigma of men in healthcare.

“Nursing is very much seen as a women’s profession but for many patients, especially male, to be treated by another man or to see men on the wards can be very important,” says the 32-year-old from Solihull.

Colin gets it. Coventry Uni gets it. When will the policy makers?

If they showed men they cared about them, perhaps men would be more likely to look to the caring professions as a career path. And that benefits us all: men, women, children – society.

Applications for the Coventry bursary will open to students on applicable courses and applying from the West Midlands from October 2017. Those lucky men will have their fees softened and be surrounded by women. Chaps: what are you waiting for?