Japan's medical schools rigged against women

[Imnobody4]

This is just like the old 11+ exams. I'm so tired of fighting this battle. It's an improvement - till the next time.

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15192292#:~:text=In%202018%2C%20it%20was%20revealed,her%2050s%20of%20the%20scandal

The percentage of women enrolled in medical schools exceeded 40 percent for the first time in fiscal 2023 in the wake of an admission rigging scandal, an education ministry survey found.

DELIBERATELY KEEPING NUMBERS LOW
In 2018, it was revealed that entrance exam scores were rigged to keep the number of women admitted to medical schools low, including at Tokyo Medical University.“I thought it was strange that the (numbers of female students) didn’t increase at all,” said a female doctor in her 50s of the scandal.

I'm so tired of fighting this battle.

Same.

This is the same the world over. DD is in med school in Ireland. In addition to her Leaving Cert (A Level equivalent ) DD needed to to extremely well on the HPAT. This is similar to the UCAT (which she also did). The HPAT etc were introduced to help more boys into med school because too many girls were getting in via A Levels and Leaving Cert.

Women in Japan seem to have a worse time of it than us though - friends who studied and did an internship there in the 80's were horrified at their treatment in the workplace.

However , and I say this as a feminist and mum to a female med student, there is an elephant in the room, in that the many female Dr's who have qualified in the past 3 decades have often opted to go part time, with the result that we now have a shortage of GP's in Ireland. I know lots of female GP's of my age - not one of them works full time. Now, if this is accepted as the norm, then we need to train more Dr's - but training costs money and training places need consultants and GP's - a viscous circle.

Some years, well decades ago, when learning about computer programming, we were told this true story.

A very well known teaching hospital in London was presuaded by some early adopted on then new technology to computerise their admission system.

After a few years it became obvious that fewer women and fewer overseas students were being admitted.

To cut a long story short the enthusiast who wrote the program had without thinking programmed in his prejudices. ie women and students with overseas qualifications were not graded as highly.

So cant make out from the article whether it was a conscious bias, or like the programmer in London, their inherent sexism and racism.

Although people tend to blame programmers, more often than not it is the person who writes the specifications that is the problem.