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Good afternoon all,

I was wondering is it true that

  1. "看護師" is a gender-neutral way of referring to a "nurse",

  2. Whereas "看護婦" implies that it is a girl,

  3. And "看護士" implies that it is a guy?

Initially that's what I'd thought, but
[WWWJDIC](http://nihongo.monash.edu/cgi-
bin/wwwjdic?1MDJ%A4%AB%A4%F3%A4%B4%A4%B7) lists "看護士" as:

> 看護士 【かんごし】 (n) nurse (may be male nurse)

Hence I was abit confused with the actual usage of the words "看護師" and "看護士".

What is the difference between "看護師" and "看護士"?
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2012-04-18T11:35:36.047
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question
usage words nuances
"看護師" vs. "看護士"
1. 看護師 is gender-neutral.
  2. 看護士 is a male 看護師.
  3. 看護婦 is a female 看護師.
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2012-04-18T12:10:13.757
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answer
Although a direct answer to your question is possible, it may be helpful to
look at the history of these words.

I was taught that back when male nurses were rarer, 看護婦 was used as a catchall
term when the gender of the nurse was unspecified. It sounds old-fashioned or
politically incorrect when used this way now, and 看護師 has become much more
common.

This is backed up by
[wikipedia](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%9C%8B%E8%AD%B7%E5%B8%AB#.E5.90.8D.E7.A7.B0.E5.A4.89.E6.9B.B4),
which states that nurses of both genders were defined (legally) as 看護婦 in
1948, later divided into female 看護婦 and male 看護士 in 1968, before being merged
to the general term 看護師 more recently in 2002.

To answer your question, you're correct about the gender implications of 看護婦
and 看護士, and the female variant in particular is still used by some,
colloquially. That said, I believe the most common modern term for all nurses
is 看護師. The more correct way now if you still need to be gender-specific would
be 女性の看護師 and 男性の看護師.

**Warning: what follows is pure speculation on my part**  
As for WWWJDIC's definition of 看護士, I personally have never seen 看護士 refer to
a non-male nurse, and would consider this to be incorrect, so I'm not sure why
the definition says "may be...". Perhaps this is something to do with the fact
that the pronunciation is the same as 看護師, and the change of terminology
described above has led to some confusion? I remember even my teacher
struggled to explain it at first.
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2012-04-18T12:45:10.657
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2012-04-24T09:09:42.993
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answer