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Notes -
Because of conditions on the ground in ~1950 when it was one of the few acceptable female jobs?
That doesn't explain why its female dominated now though. Medicine and law used to be male dominated. Now women make up a majority of new doctors and lawyers. These things can and do change.
A better explanation is that nursing, a caring profession, is majority female because all caring professions are majority-female, because women enjoy caring (for obvious biological reasons relating to maternity).
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