MICHAEL Ho Mun-ka is a man in a woman's world. But it doesn't make him uncomfortable. And he has only once been told he shouldn't be there.
As a student nurse at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Mr Ho was one of just 10 men in a class of 60. As chairman of the Association of Hong Kong Nursing Staff more than 90 per cent of his 11,000 union members are women. And as the health-care constituency's representative in the Legislative Council, most of his constituents are women.
During the 1988 chairmanship election, one of the women candidates made gender an issue. But Mr Ho doesn't see it that way: ''If that is the case that is really sexual discrimination.'' He says that as a union leader in a mostly female workforce he is doing a job many members would hesitate to take on, ''My feeling is quite a lot of my female members are still affected by the traditional sex role,'' he said. ''That would certainly, I think, affect their degree of participation and these sorts of things.
''I am not a sexist. A lot of these members would support that we should do it, but they themselves may be unable to come out, so they would like someone to do it and I think so long as someone is doing it they do not mind that the person is a man.'' Mr Ho hopes that university education, rather than training in the confines of a nursing school, will broaden future nurses' horizons, teaching them about issues such as sex roles.
The union has tried to encourage its women members to take a more active role - ''but we have not tried enough, we should certainly do more'', he admits.
Mr Ho took up nursing because he knew he wouldn't get into medical school. Eighteen years on, the job has brought him the chance to influence government policy, to mix at the highest levels of government, to travel, and to become a leading citizen.
