Men working in traditionally female-dominated caring professions such as nursing and teaching are winning a new gender war with their female colleagues, according to a study.

Research from Brunel University's business school found that men in caring careers believe they get more respect and more challenging roles than their women counterparts.

Male primary teachers and nurses are carving out niche areas, opting for more typically "masculine" activities and emotionally demanding specialisms, the study found.

Ruth Simpson, author of the report, said: "Women are definitely losing the gender war in the caring professions.

"While the caring performed by a woman is often devalued as a 'natural' part of femininity, the emotional labour performed by men is often seen as an asset."

The majority of male nurses interviewed in the study had chosen to specialise in mental health - traditionally a more male-dominated area of nursing - and accident and emergency care.

Male primary school teachers stressed their involvement in sports development, particularly of boys.

The 30 men interviewed as part of the study revealed that they believed their masculinity led them to be given more responsible or difficult roles than women colleagues and that patients and others appreciated them.

In comments which will be likely to frustrate many female workers - long struggling in caring professions against low pay and lack of status - male nurses reported being often given the testing task of breaking bad news to relatives or dealing with suicidal patients.

"I think people prefer to be given bad news by a man rather than a woman - it seems as if they are being taken more seriously," one said.

One teacher reported: "With all children, being a bloke gets you a lot more kudos." A nurse said that "if the charge nurse is male, he gains more respect than the ward sister".

Dr Simpson said male nurses were "moving away from a subordinate role" and raising the status of their jobs to equality with the role of a doctor.

Female nurses were seen as "too deferential and unassertive" to be taken seriously enough by medical staff to make a similar shift, as well as being unable to take part in the socialising and "male bonding" with senior male doctors which helped cement male nurses' apparently higher status.

In teaching, meanwhile, men were often called on to take the role of disciplinarian and authority figure.

Outside work, too, male workers often sought to play down the "feminine", caring aspects of their jobs, emphasising their sports coaching role in school, for example, to be seen as "one of the boys".

Many confessed to changing their job title if describing their work to an acquaintance in the pub - "I always emphasise the sports side," said one teacher, while another confessed: "I say I work for a cancer charity."

Dr Simpson acknowledged that women workers might find the views of men interviewed frustrating. But she added: "If we want to encourage men into caring occupations we need to understand some of the difficulties and challenges they face in being seen to be a man in a female role. It's not easy for them."

Very few boys leaving school went into nursing, she said - men tended to choose nursing at 25 to 30 after more typically male jobs in banking or the army. As a result some resisted the pressure to climb the career ladder and wanted to remain with pupils or patients.

Men in caring professions did encounter pockets of resistance from female colleagues, but were generally made welcome, Dr Simpson found.