Healthcare, elementary education, and domestic roles (HEED) have historically been female-dominated professions and continue to have significantly lower levels of male participation. Men’s participation in HEED has remained relatively unchanged for the past decade (Croft et al., 2015). In nursing specifically, around 91% of regulated nurses in Canada were female in 2021, with only around 9% of nurses being male, making it evident that this HEED domain continues to be a female-dominated profession (Canadian Nurses Association, 2023). While there is an abundance of research that examines women’s interest, involvement, support, and lived experiences in STEM, there is a dearth of research on men’s engagement in HEED (e.g., Blaique et al., 2022; García-Ramos et al., 2022). A factor that may suppress men’s participation in HEED occupations is the stigma and backlash attached to partaking in work that requires their engagement in gender counter-stereotypical roles and behaviors (Moss-Racusin et al., 2022; Rudman & Fairchild, 2004; Rudman et al., 2013). When men do participate in HEED domains, they are often subject to prejudice and discrimination (Moss-Racusin et al., 2022). For instance, male nurses report facing more workplace harassment, rejection, and bullying compared to female nurses. Male elementary school teachers report increased discrimination and being perceived as a threat to children’s safety and less likeable and hireable than their female counterparts (Moss-Racusin et al., 2022). Additionally, research shows that men display a decreased sense of belonging in HEED, less positive attitudes toward HEED, and lower aspirations to participate in HEED when shown evidence for anti-male biases in these fields compared to women. This sample of men also reported greater anticipation of experiencing discrimination in HEED occupations (Moss-Racusin et al., 2022). Together, this evidence suggests that men do face gender bias in female-dominated occupations, and men may generally have decreased interest, motivation, and support for other men partaking in HEED domains (Allen & Smith, 2011; Croft et al., 2015). These findings highlight the need for continued efforts to understand and address gender biases and promote gender diversity in HEED occupations. Research also suggests that men are more constrained by gender norms than women, as they face more backlash and face more social and economic penalties when engaging in counter-stereotypical roles or behaviours (Rudman & Fairchild, 2004). Specifically, despite men’s low self-ratings on communality, research shows that gender differences in communion can be amplified or minimized depending on the salience of contextual cues in which communal traits are studied (Allen & Smith, 2011; Croft et al., 2015). For example, when men believe that they are engaging in gendered tasks and are being assessed in terms of gender stereotypes, they are more likely to perform in a stereotypical manner to disassociate themselves from feminine stereotypes (Croft et al., 2015). These findings are supported by precarious manhood theory, which states that in order to establish manhood, men must behave in ways that demonstrate toughness and dominance, and they risk losing their status as a man if they display weakness or other traditionally feminine qualities (Vandello & Bosson, 2013). Moreover, the demonstration of manhood is a continuous process, requiring men to constantly prove themselves, especially to other men (Vandello & Bosson, 2013). From this perspective, the threats to gender status that may be experienced when partaking in more feminine roles and occupations may explain why some men may anticipate more backlash weaken their interest and participation in HEED domains like nursing, as this field is a traditionally feminine, communal domain. Gender stereotypes that perpetuate stigma and bias exist in the nursing domain, especially for practicing male nurses, as men frequently report only being assigned to complete tasks involving physical labour or technical specialties instead of caring for patients (Teresa-Morales et al., 2022). This gendered division of tasks perpetuates the notion that men do not possess compassion or other traditionally communal skills needed to perform other nursing tasks. Other examples of stereotypes that perpetuate stigma and bias include male nurses being perceived as a sexual threat to women and children by both women and other men, patients preferring care only from female nurses and rejecting treatments provided by male nurses, and male nurses often being seen as “doctor rejects,” due to the undervaluation of the nursing profession and beliefs about nursing being a secondary or subservient career option for men wanting to pursue healthcare (Moss-Racusin et al., 2022; Teresa-Morales et al., 2022). Male nurses also report advantages at the workplace, where one male nurse reported receiving up to three promotions in one year over female nurses with the same, if not better, qualifications (Lyu et al., 2022). Additionally, traditional notions of gender are also demonstrated by both male and female nurses, as they report male nurses being more resilient, endurant, and emotionally stable than their female counterparts in different nursing domains, such as clinical nursing, for example (Lyu et al., 2022). These findings suggest that although nursing is a female-dominated, traditionally communal profession where women are expected to be superior, if and when men enter this domain, they have the unique ability to ride the “glass escalator” and rise faster and quicker to upper levels of leadership (Brandford & Brandford-Stevenson, 2021). Nonetheless, despite this advantage, many men continue to lack interest and anticipate discrimination and social stigma in the nursing domain. To better understand the factors that may be perpetuating this gender asymmetry in occupational interest and pursuit, the present research examines whether the stereotypes associated with nursing serve as potential psychological barriers to men’s interest and involvement in this domain. This study will examine whether countering essentialist notions of gender roles by exposing men to sociocultural scientific explanations (compared to biological explanations or no explanation) for the gender asymmetry in nursing would increase men’s interest and involvement in nursing and support for other men entering nursing. It is proposed that essentialist arguments for the gender asymmetry in nursing are grounded in the linking of communal traits to women’s inherent nature and not men’s, which serve to justify the asymmetry as inevitable and immutable, whereas sociocultural arguments for the gender asymmetry in nursing recognize the role of gender socialization in discouraging men from displaying communal attributes and stigmatizing men for pursuing female-dominated domains, which renders the asymmetry socially constructed and not biologically determined.