Japanese Medical School

[sexnotgender]

I was just reading in Time that Japanese medical schools have admitted ‘doctoring’ entrance exams to stop women getting in
Apparently they were concerned they’d want to have babies and their training would be wasted.

Fucks sake

And after the barriers of the admissions system, awkward interview questions, 5-6 years of medical school, junior doctor years of assumed absence due to pregnancy and then horrendous working conditions with zero occupational health support during pregnancy, returning to work to rolled eyes and comments about the next pregnancy.....patients and parents still refer to us as "the lady/the nurse".

Shocking. And s shot in the foot since research shows women make rrslly good doctors!

It's absolutely appalling. The 1975 Sex Discrimination Act made quotas in medical schools illegal in this country, and had an amazing impact - the numbers of women going to medical school rocketed (there are now more female medical students than male). But who'd have thought this would still be going on in 2018? And some of the stories on here are just shocking.

When I took the 11+ in the late 80s I also remember it being the case that girls had a higher pass mark than boys. The reason given was that boys mature later.

At the time I just accepted it (we moved house shortly afterwards to a place that had a comprehensive system) but thinking back, it was outrageous. Especially as all the secondary schools in that area were single sex so they could easily have expanded grammar school provision for girls.

@2rebecca

wasn't fair on the poor late maturing boys

Ah bless...

Was never deemed a problem when it was the other way around.

A bit like the hoo-ha over all women shortlists for parliamentary seats, when all male shortlists had been just dandy for the last x hundred years. Still, seems that’s being fixed with ths inclusion of self-ID transwomen.

A professor at my old uni said that the only logical explanation for girls outperforming boys at school was that females are simply more intelligent (with a caveat that intelligence itself is a disputed concept).

He said every country that industrialised and then expected women to get educated and work saw the same thing happen (girls and women out perform boys and men). He said all the exceptions could be explained with other factors but not the rule.

Being a good little lib fem at the time I did my research to try and prove him wrong. He wiped the floor with each and every point.

I remember saying something about how problematic it was to assume women were brighter than men and he answered something like "Nobody has a problem accepting men are physically stronger, it's just a fact"

Anecdata, but, think about the women you know, and then think about the men you know. Which group seems brighter to you on average?

I remember that about the 11+. If they'd made the pass mark equal, there'd have been more girls in grammar school than boys, which would have been awkward, not just for the obvious patriarchal reasons, but for logistical ones (with separate boys' and girls' grammar schools, there was presumably only enough space for a certain number of girls in a school). Does anyone know how it works now? Have they adjusted the 11+ exam so that roughly equal numbers of boys and girls pass?

Personally I would hesitate to say that women on average are brighter than men. What I have noticed, however, is the preponderance of stupid men who manage to rise to senior positions and, conversely, the number of very clever women who are much lower down the ladder. And I know so many women who were doing reasonably well in their career until they had children and then they took lowly jobs as teaching assistants or the like. That's quite depressing.

The reason 68% of women don't go back to work after having children in Japan is because many of them are fired or "let go" during maternity leave or in some cases once married.

So the hospitals in Japan are first of all creating the issue through maternity discrimination, and then they're further punishing women who are applying to train as doctors because they'll "leave" to have children when it's actually the hospitals pushing them out.

Apologies for starting such a thoroughly depressing thread!

A professor at my old uni said that the only logical explanation for girls outperforming boys at school was that females are simply more intelligent (with a caveat that intelligence itself is a disputed concept).

He said every country that industrialised and then expected women to get educated and work saw the same thing happen (girls and women out perform boys and men). He said all the exceptions could be explained with other factors but not the rule.
and
and he answered something like "Nobody has a problem accepting men are physically stronger, it's just a fact"

I would agree with the professor.

Think for a second how fucking good any female doctor you get is going to be when you consider what they have to get through to get to the other side.

And to think people didn't want a "lady doctor" when women first started coming through.

A professor at my old uni said that the only logical explanation for girls outperforming boys at school was that females are simply more intelligent (with a caveat that intelligence itself is a disputed concept).He said every country that industrialised and then expected women to get educated and work saw the same thing happen (girls and women out perform boys and men). He said all the exceptions could be explained with other factors but not the rule.andand he answered something like "Nobody has a problem accepting men are physically stronger, it's just a fact"

I don't agree with that.

I see the see same thing with poc too. I don't think any 'race' or sex is more clever than any other. I think we just don't expect white boys to perform and they become lazy and stupid. Then you get hand-wringing articles lamenting the underperforming white boys who still seem to rise to the top when privilege kicks in and they all end up in management.

If you consistently expect very little from someone and STILL reward them they have no reason to work hard they will end up useless. Women and POC outperform white men because they have to from the start.

Female doctors in Japan must be exceptional. I’m sick of women being punished by societies all over the world in various ways for having to be the sex that gets pregnant and gives birth in order for the human race to continue. Maybe we should just stop and we can die out. Or self identify as men so we can get the easier track.

A professor at my old uni said that the only logical explanation for girls outperforming boys at school was that females are simply more intelligent (with a caveat that intelligence itself is a disputed concept).

There was a study a few years ago that I haven't been able to find online, I think I read about it in New Scientist. Surgeons who were more concerned about their rank had poorer success rates than surgeons who were less obsessed with getting other people to defer to them.

I'd be interested to know what the difference is between the boys who perform well ad those that don't, beyond 'intelligence.' I wonder how much social intelligence helps.
If overt competitiveness and constantly worrying about your place in the hierarchy holds back surgeons from reaching their full potential, it must also have a negative effect on men in other situations.

The only drama in the last two decades were the number of boys failing to meet the standards, and girls outperforming them massively.

I thought the issue wasn't boy as such but working class boys.

We've lived in area and my children have gone to such schools were working class boys don't do as well - from what I can see it's expectations - about behaviour about their interests about what they can achieve. My DH from a working class background was told not to aim for university – he has PhD from world class university.

Went round current primary and DS had a head in a book every second and the teacher still made comments about boys not reading . Gender stereotyping is my Dc school has always been bad for my DDs and my DS.

I think there is more worry because the industries that took these boys on for work have been ones disappearing (– not only one textile industry employed large number of women like MIL they have gone as well).

I believe it considered bad for societies to have large numbers of young dissatisfied young males crime and disorder go up I think – but given our aging population we also need all young people to be paying into the tax pool.

I’m not sure about women being more intelligent – but there are different bell shaped curves for each sex – men have more at both ends – more of lower and extremely high intelligence.

Sadly not surprised by the article – Japan has real issues with sexual equality. My own mother's education was cut short as a girl in this country her family deemed it not worthwhile when she could be earning something she is still annoyed about in her 60's. There were some girls I grew up with who had families with similar mindsets - though they often did some qulification post GCSEs but they did marry very young - that was 90s.

miri1985 Tue 07-Aug-18 21:00:26
I mean this is nothing new, women were way outperforming men in the leaving cert so Ireland brought in an extra exam called the HPAT to make sure that they were selecting the "right" candidates to be doctors and was not only based on exam results unsurprisingly the amount of men getting in went way up

This is a really good point.

What is interesting about Ireland is that admission is gender blind and is strictly on exam results. When entry to medicine was based solely on secondary school exam results, over 70% of those offered places in medical degrees were female. The introduction of an aptitude test (similar to UKCAT) reduced the percentage female admitted to 58%.

Here, in the UK, our admissions were never gender blind. Currently, 55% of medical students are female. Most universities will interview for places on medical degrees and students will also submit a personal statement as well as an admissions test such as a BMAT or UKCAT.

I forgot to add:

Here, in the UK, admission to medical degrees is not gender blind and male applicants have a higher success rate that female applicants.

It's disgusting! And people say we have equality...

TwoGinScentedTears, MoltenLasagne and others

I think the expectation that women will be unpaid carers for the elderly must play a part in this. Japan has an ageing population and made a choice to not use large numbers of immigrants as carers for a variety of reasons.The "burden" is on women and the whole setup results in lower participation in the work market. It is one the pillars of society if you want.

It is one of the solutions to the question of an ageing population in a country with limited space and resources.

andhowcouldieverrefuse someone needs to let the Japanese ladies know that it’s easy to self id out of oppression like caring for the elderly

Wait... what do you mean it doesn’t work like that?

Slightly off-topic, but It's not just education where this sort of thing happens - The company I worked for around having DS, I was called in for a disciplinary for being signed off sick beyond my agreed maternity leave due to particularly crippling PND. During the meeting I was very strongly encouraged to agree that I felt guilty that my absence was holding a job back from someone who needed work - apparently it would have been a more favourable outcome if I acknowledged my selfishness. My employment was "terminated due to ill health". I was a fucking call centre customer services advisor, and had been signed off for a month. In 2014.

So sorry CanineE