Sharon Breward MBE

Beginning in 2006, Tokyo Medical University began secretly limiting female applicants to ensure that more men became doctors. Female applicants’ admissions test scores were dropped 10-20% right out of the gate, but that still wasn’t enough, so they automatically added 20 bonus points to the scores of all male applicants who had failed the exam less than four times. The goal was to keep female enrollment at 30% or less, and when this was uncovered accidentally in 2018, Japanese authorities launched a nationwide audit of 81 medical schools. At least 9 other universities were caught doing the same thing — denying qualified female applicants in favor of less-qualified men. Many other institutions were suspected. The justifications were, quite frankly, pathetic. TMU claimed that they were doing it because they assumed women would eventually leave the medical profession to marry and have children — you know, because women aren’t capable of balancing motherhood and a career. Juntendo University claimed they adjusted women’s scores because women have better communications skills and mature faster, giving them an “unfair advantage” over men. Kitasato University claimed men were more “flexible,” and could better handle the overnight/on call scheduling demanded of student doctors. Kanazawa Medical University and Iwate Medical University claimed that men were more likely to work in rural areas, where there is a shortage of doctors. There was no statistical evidence to support this statement, but that’s what they said. St Marianna University School of Medicine flat out denied the charges, even after the government investigation found objective statistical proof that they had consistently marked down the test scores of female applicants. Instead, they blamed “irregularities” in their internal screening criteria. They did not specify the nature of these irregularities. This scandal proved something that Japanese women had suspected for over a quarter of a century: that they were being deliberately excluded from the medical profession. For decades, the rate of female medical students had hovered in the 30% range. It was referred to as the “40% barrier,” and medical schools always claimed it existed naturally. They were lying. In late 2018, the Japanese government ordered medical schools to stop rigging scores. In the very next cycle of entrance exams, women outscored and outperformed men at multiple institutions for the first time in Japanese history. By 2023, the “40% barrier” had been broken. This scandal didn’t happen 50 years ago. Within the last decade, qualified female applicants were being rejected from major Japanese medical schools in favor of waitlisted men. Their scores were artificially reduced, while male applicants had their scores inflated. As a result, just 23.6% of Japanese doctors are women. This leaves Japanese women with very limited choices when it comes to female-only medical care. We know that female doctors take female patients more seriously. How many Japanese women are getting substandard medical care because their doctor is a man who was given a high score, and not a woman who actually earned one?