Currently, there is an extremely low number of male students enrolled in Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) programmes across international universities. Due to this, there is also a low number of men working as SLTs. This has serious implications for health service delivery as research has shown that matching therapist and client based on gender can result in a more successful outcome, suggesting that current SLT service delivery is not as effective as it could be.
Much of the research suggests that this rarity of men in university programmes could be due to several reasons such as lack of awareness of the profession, concern that the profession is female-dominated, perception that the profession is oriented for females (requiring traditionally ‘feminine-perceived’ characteristics such as being nurturing and being a superior communicator), that it offers poor salary and has a less scientific basis.
The purpose of this research project is to identify the factors that influence male students to study SLT programmes in the Republic of Ireland, as well as those factors that act as barriers to other men entering the programmes and any strategies to remove them. This will be achieved by interviewing 6 male students enrolled in Irish SLT programmes. The qualitative data collected will be analysed using thematic analysis.
The results will be utilised to increase the number of male students in these programmes. It is expected that this would lead to an increase in men working as SLTs in Republic of Ireland.
