Male infertility as a critical equity case: reframing nursing epistemologies through masculinities and justice-oriented reflexivity

Infertility affects one in six couples worldwide, yet men’s reproductive health remains marginalized in nursing scholarship. This exclusion is not simply a gap in evidence; it reflects deeper inequities rooted in gendered histories of reproduction, where women’s bodies have been medicalized and men’s virility preserved as cultural capital. Such dynamics have produced epistemological silences that perpetuate inequitable care. Drawing on theories of traditional masculinity, stigma, and nursing epistemology, this commentary positions male infertility as a critical equity case that exposes how disciplinary knowledge reproduces gendered exclusions. The Integrative Couple-Centered Nursing Framework (ICCNF) is introduced as an illustrative intervention, demonstrating how nursing can reconfigure reproductive health as a relational and justice-oriented phenomenon. By interrogating the inequities embedded in nursing’s epistemological foundations, this paper contributes to global debates on health equity, urging the discipline to expand its boundaries, confront entrenched silences, and reimagine reproductive health as a shared, inclusive, and socially embedded domain.