By Eric Raicovich

4/24/03

The 1970’s experienced a large increase in the number of females being admitted into medical school, why?

Sex-role socialization

Direct discrimination from medical schools

1929 – 4% of those admitted to med school were women

1970 – 11% were women

1984 – 33% were women

Can you explain this phenomena?

Mary Roth Walsh Doctors Wanted – No Women Need Apply: Sexual Barriers in the Medical Profession, 1835-1975 (1977)

“the central proposition that this book advances is that the medical establishment made a conscious effort to minimize the number of women physicians” (pp. xvii-xviii).

So (according to Walsh) why the increase during the 70’s???

Lawsuits

Title IX legislation – Equal opportunity amendment passed condemning discrimination in education

Was Walsh correct in her hypothesis? Lets look at the data...

Observe the sudden increase. Upon first glance, we would think that there must have been some sort of catalyst explaining the sudden boost in women applicants? Was it the direct result of Title IX? Lets look at more data.

The number of male applicants, although larger than the female pool, still seems to share the increase in applications in the early seventies. This is the first bit of evidence against Walsh’s hypothesis.

The discrimination index is a numerical figure which explains to what extent women were discriminated against per year. A positive number indicates discrimination against women and a negative number indicates inverse discrimination. What can you infer from this graph?

  1967 1972 1977

No. of schools with discrimination scores 10

1 0 0

No. of schools with discrimination scores of 1-9

41 16 34

No. of schools with discrimination scores = 0

8 28 33

No. of schools with discrimination scores -1 to -9

38 60 51

No. of schools with discrimination scores -10

4 4 1

Mean -.48 -1.64 -.17

Standard deviation 5.00 3.21 2.07

(a bit more evidence...using confidence intervals)

Observe the table on your handout…

The standard deviation for each year gets progressively lower…what does that mean?

Is there evidence that schools are not being discriminatory towards women? How can we be sure?

95% CONFIDENCE INTERVAL

n

s96.1

If 0 falls within the confidence interval that we get, then we have evidence that does NOT support Walsh’s hypothesis, and in fact, there is NO discrimination occurring.

95% CI for μ of 1967:

92

00.596.148. 0.521286

So the confidence interval for 1967 is between 0.041286 and -1.001286. In this year, zero does fall in the confidence interval so we have evidence for no discrimination in medical school admissions.

Using the 95% Confidence Interval formula, see if there is evident in support of discrimination or against it in 1977, the last column. Do you think there will be a trend?

You should have gotten 0.371923 for an answer. Since the mean is -.17, 0 does fall within this confidence interval, following the trend in 1967.

The correlation between the proportion of male applicants admitted and the proportion of female applicants admitted to each of the school was r = .85 and in 1977, = .96

Is this a strong correlation?

Yes. Because r is so close to 1, the strong correlation means that there is no discrimination against either males or females.

From the data presented, it does not seem that the low number of women applicants was due to discrimination by the medical schools themselves. What are some of the reasons for disproving Wash’s hypothesis?

In the early half of the 1900’s, women were discouraged from entering the medical profession because it was an occupation that seemed unreasonable for them.

There was a slight increase in the mid 1940’s due to World War II. After the war was over, the number of female applications declined, particularly during the 50’s because there was an emphasis on women going back into the home.