INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Of the 1,019 female applicants to the university in 2018, only 30 women were accepted
(Representational)One of Japan's top medical universities has been systematically blocking female applicants from entering the school for at
least eight years, local news agencies reported on Thursday.Tokyo Medical University, a private institution consistently ranked among the
country's best for clinical medicine, has been automatically lowering the entrance exam results of female applicants for the past decade, an
attempt to keep the ratio of women in each class of students below 30 percent, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported
A specific coefficient was reportedly applied to the scores of all female applicants, lowering them by 10 to 20 percent.Details about the
tampering were leaked amid an investigation into top administrators at Tokyo Medical University, who came under fire in June for accepting
bribes from an education ministry official
Masahiko Usui, chairman of the school's board of regents, and Mamoru Suzuki, the university president, resigned this month after allegations
that they had inflated the grades of the ministry official's son to secure him a spot at the school.Of the 1,019 female applicants to the
university in 2018, only 30 women - less than 3 percent - were eventually accepted
Nearly 9 percent of male applicants gained admission, the Asahi Shimbun reported.Kyoko Tanebe, an executive board member at the Japan Joint
Association of Medical Professional Women, told the Japan Times that other medical institutions probably have similar policies that
discriminate against female applicants
According to recent data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, women make up less than a quarter of doctors in
Japan - the lowest proportion among the 34 OECD countries studied."It's a systematic problem in Japanese society that we're not supporting
this is the worst possible way to fix the problem," said Yusuku Tsugawa, a Japanese doctor currently working as an assistant professor of
medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.In a study published last year, Tsugawa found that patients treated by female
physicians in the United States had significantly lower mortality rates and readmission rates than those cared for by male physicians at the
These findings may not be directly translatable to Japan, but Tsugawa believes it is still unwise to excluded potential female doctors
Barring qualified candidates from medical school, particularly as Japan continues to grapple with an aging population, will harm the country
in the long run, he said.And even if Japanese women do drop out of the profession at higher rates than men right now, it is not the role of
medical schools to fix that, Tsugawa argued
"Their job, their role and their mission is to train the doctors
