I think there’s a wider problem here, in that those jobs were traditionally jobs where it was assumed that people would be doing their best and where there was some admiration and appreciation from the wider population. So even if they were not financially especially well rewarded, there were other less well defined rewards for doing them. Nowadays there are a lot more angry, demanding people whose expectations are unreasonable, but who will kick up a fuss, while the management, who have never actually done the job themselves, tend to throw them to the wolves rather than working from a basic assumption that the staff are doing their best, even if something has gone wrong,
I don’t know so much about nursing, but there are obvious problems in the teaching profession, where there is now an assumption that, unless everyone is meeting certain (frankly arbitrary) targets, that they are not doing a good job. Everything has to be measured and everyone has to prove themselves over and over. So instead of finding their own way to pass on their knowledge, they are pushed more and more into a treadmill of meeting targets, which also removes any previous “perks” such as extended holidays, as meeting those targets also means working a great deal outside the contracted hours.
That general attitude: that we can’t just trust that most people will do their jobs adequately if we mostly give them free rein, but instead must assume that if people are not constantly monitored, they will probably slack off, leads to feelings of distrust. Assuming people will always be lazy and need checking up on constantly, tends to be self-fulfilling. Arbitrary targets and general distrust (and thus lack of respect) lead to a situation where previously enthusiastic people will end up demoralized and will work to meet them and no more.
So I don’t just think that it’s just that women’s expectations have changed and they are no longer willing to be put upon. I think societal attitudes to those people have changed. The jobs have less autonomy and the people doing them are frequently shown little or no respect. My experience is that those things can be as important to me as wages, assuming the wages are not so low as to make living impossible.
As the wages are still relatively low and the stress and lack of job satisfaction has been ratcheted up, fewer people are willing to carry on. Those remaining are being pushed harder and harder, so you end up with a domino effect as well as a preponderance of people feeling hard done by, who are less and less willing to go the extra mile.
I hope all this will be reversed at some point, or that the current, dysfunctional model will be replaced with something that regards people as human beings and not as resource units, but I’m not optimistic. It’s just very sad that careers that used to be fulfilling, no longer are.