Why would I be so interested in a case of blatant gender discrimination in a Japanese university? There are several reasons, really and all of them are troubling. Tokyo Medical University proves gender discrimination is still real.
Let me start by saying that gender discrimination in Japan is every bit as illegal as it is in the United States. The United States passed the Equal Rights Amendment on March 22, 1972. The Japanese Equal Employment Opportunity Law was passed in 1985. If it was a major breakthrough for the U.S., it was doubly so for Japan a society that had long discriminated against women.
In the world over, the percentage of women physicians graduating from Japanese medical school has traditionally been the lowest at about 23 percent. It is followed by South Korea, maybe a percentage point higher, and unbelievably, at barely 35 percent in the United States. In both Japan and the U.S., medical school is a very expensive undertaking, and in both countries, private schools are more expensive than “public,” or state-run universities.
For most students, female and male, public universities are the way to go. However, the playing field is hardly level.
A scandal erupts
A scandal uncovered in 2018 found that for the last 9 years, Tokyo Medical University has willfully and deceitfully lowered the scores of female applicants. The scandal was discovered in 2018 when about 2,600 students took the entrance exam. The percentage was 61 percent male and 39 percent female.
Yet when the results were tabulated, only 18 percent of the women (about 30)
Made it through to admission. When the reasons for the low results were analyzed it was found that the women had scored very well but the university arbitrarily multiplied the results by a fraction that lowered the score.
The education ministry, when discovering the scandal said: “A university can take responsibility for adjusting gender proportions if they make it explicit when they are recruiting for the entrance exams. If Tokyo Medical University made such an adjustment without explanation, then it is problematic.”
However, the seemingly timid response in this case on the education ministry side was met with outrage throughout the country at the inequality of the system. Said Dr. Ayako Nishikawa (women):
“This is normal. All the schools are doing it. If they just admit the best, the freshman class would be all female!”
However, she then made a sexist disclaimer himself: “Because girls are better (students). But then everybody will be ophthalmologists and dermatologists. Women can’t handle heavy people with hip dislocations. Few (women) become surgeons. After all, we need boys who will become surgeons. You can’t operate with a big belly (that they are pregnant). So, at the end of the day, you’ve got to do something about gender ratios.” Japan needs to do a lot of work to eliminate biases.
However, her assertions are disingenuous in talking about women’s sizes and the areas of medicine where they may find success. Latvia, for example, graduates more than 70 percent of female medical students with each medical school class with a large percentage being surgeons.
Statistical discrimination
Not all that long-ago analytics were used to justify gender discrimination across the board. The classic argument against women was that they would get pregnant and hence universities would be justified in not training them to be doctors. There were even gender-based retirement systems put into place, projecting that women would not contribute enough to the workforce
The Japanese Equal Employment Opportunity Law prohibited discrimination from the recruiting stage, through hiring and to retirement. This means that a legal framework making gender discrimination impossible, however, illegal methods (such as lowering test scores) were put into place to keep women out of certain professions. Enforcement will be the tricky part.
There is a massive amount of evidence here in the U.S. strongly suggesting that female medical school students are often bullied and harassed to the point where they drop out. As in Japan, American and Australian female medical students are dissuaded from entering fields such as orthopedic surgery. Studies reveal a lack of mentors who are willing to help these students.
In the era of #MeToo, both in the U.S. and Japan, we still have a very long way to go. Tokyo Medical University proves gender discrimination is still real
