Austria med school gives women grading edge. The university is grading men and women differently based on gender.

ENTP · 2012-07-08T22:23:29+00:00

The woman thus "is placed in the rankings clearly about 50 to 100 places ahead of her male competitor," Orasche said.

then

"It's not at all a case of women being given the advantage," she said

Blatant lying at its finest.

penikripa · 2012-07-09T00:19:21+00:00

"I don't want to be able to become a doctor only because I fit a quota," said Katarina Hobl. "I want to become a doctor on the basis of my achievements."

Ah, if only more women had this much self-respect.

753861429-951843627 · 2012-07-08T20:31:35+00:00

What a great way to even the odds, let them get away with knowing less than their male counter parts and then give them a scalpel afterwards. Get the authorities involved, this is total discrimination.

753861429-951843627 · 2012-07-08T22:33:31+00:00

I'm from that country. The situation is a bit more complex than especially the headline is suggesting.

Austria has a relatively unique problem with entrance exams; in all other countries that use the same or very similar tests, roughly the same number of women and men pass and are admitted to the university. In Austria, there is a marked imbalance. The reasons for that are many. Among the suggested are

some systemic problem in primary and secondary education that makes women fare better there, but worse in university entrance exams (a possibility might be a "gender grading bonus" in pre-university education for girls, who then might not study or learn as much as their male counterparts who had to work harder for the same grade)
the fact that men are on average older then women when they attempt the exam, because there is conscription or mandatory social services for conscientious objectors, increasing men's "life experience"
a bias in the exam

The latter was more or less soundly disproved, as the same test doesn't result in skewed results elsewhere. There are other suggested reasons, but from my newspaper reading the two remaining ones seem to be the best contenders for an explanation

In both cases, this imbalance is a systemic issue. It isn't that young women are stupider, but external cultural factors cause them to fail at the entrance exams for medical university.

This is then used as the justification for gender balancing in one way or the other. There also is no "finalised" consent on how to deal with the problem, the active gender skewing is just one attempt at a short-term solution.

Reasons why this is not necessarily a problem for medicine in Austria is that the entrance exam, whilst meant to increase the quality of students and reducing the number of drop-outs pre-emptively to ultimately reduce cost (education is state financed), are not necessarily a predictor of the quality of the doctor that results from an education. A student might have slight disadvantages upon entering, but be a better doctor upon finishing, than any given other student.

Why this is potentially very unfair to male prospective students is obvious; they are not to blame for any systemic problems with the education system or conscription.

Scott2508 · 2012-07-08T21:10:22+00:00

the sad thing is this doesnt surprise me .

melb22 · 2012-07-08T22:24:58+00:00

The reallly significant news is not even the fact that one Austrian medical school applies a lower standard to women, it's that American universities in general (according to Dr Henry Sondheimer) use a personal interview to "overcome" the problem of men's higher test scores.

stemgang · 2012-07-08T21:13:24+00:00

the new system is skewed precisely because it compensates for the fact that women score traditionally lower

they argue that it's needed to even the playing field. Since the Vienna medical school introduced its current entrance exam six years ago, they say, women on average have scored significantly lower each time than men.

"There is no women's bonus," insisted vice dean Karin Gutierrrez-Lobos.

Karin's intellectual dishonesty is showing.

Lawtonfogle · 2012-07-08T22:22:01+00:00

If the way you are testing people do not accurately reflect what some know, change the test, don't grade on a curve. If the test is a reflection of reality and cannot be changed, then those who cannot articulate what they know in the needed form need to work on their problems.

FreddyDeus · 2012-07-09T00:42:34+00:00

they argue that it's needed to even the playing field.

That is patently absurd. Medicine is one of the many professional areas where women do well and are heavily represented. The article itself points out that this is rare in Europe, so it would seem that the playing field obviously doesn't need leveling.

More to the point, how much longer is the world going to continue attaching value to these cliched and facile phrases.

I've never been particularly excellent in the field of athletics, for example. But I'd love to compete in the Olympics, so where the hell is my 'level playing field'.

CrawdaddyJoe · 2012-07-09T01:43:22+00:00

They probably imagine they're helping women, but all they're going to do is discredit a generation of women doctors in Austria.

accountabilityishard · 2012-07-08T21:13:58+00:00

The university's policy is apparently unique in Europe. Those responsible for giving women a grading edge are aware that it could expose the institution to EU legal action, on charges of discrimination, but they argue that it's needed to even the playing field. Since the Vienna medical school introduced its current entrance exam six years ago, they say, women on average have scored significantly lower each time than men.

So not only do they know what they're doing is wrong, but in the name of "gender equality" they're letting women pass as doctors without the proper training simply because women do poorly on the exam compared to men.

WTF IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE, THEY ARE PUTTING PEOPLES LIVES IN THE HANDS OF POORLY TRAINED FEMALE DOCTORS AND FOR WHAT, SO THEY DON'T HURT SOMEONE'S FUCKING FEELINGS?!!?

"Oh, I'm sorry your surgery was botched and the damage caused is permanent and irreversible now, but we have to meet a quota of female doctors, sorry." WHAT THE GODDAMN FUCK.

iongantas · 2012-07-08T21:16:50+00:00

If I knew that one set of people were being allowed to pass medical tests with lower criteria than another, I would never see people in the first set of criteria for medical purposes.

Headphone_Actress · 2012-07-09T01:51:24+00:00

:? What?

I think this is extremely wrong. :( The women should have studied harder. You don't simply skewer a grade like that.

TrueEvenIfUdenyIt · 2012-07-09T02:56:44+00:00

I don't understand why nobody posted this in 2x, or r/women, or r/feminisms. It's a women's issue, right?

EvilShallWin · 2012-07-08T21:13:36+00:00

I'm never letting a woman from this school operate on me.

Gingor · 2012-07-08T20:49:31+00:00

Well, looks like I wont accept treatment from female doctors in the future.

Hamakua · 2012-07-09T18:18:12+00:00

To all of those who think that a differing standard on entrance exams won't have an influence all the way up the talent pool on both sides, you need to go back and take a statistics course.

Mock up infographic of what is going on

The problem no one is admitting to is that the lower standards for women on even entrance exams will have an influence on the talent pool. If you have lower standards on "only" the entrance exams, it will flood the lower end of talent distribution of an over-representation of people at the very bottom end of the "barely graduated by the skin of their teeth".

What ends up happening is that while women will graduate by the same standards men are held to, there will be far more of them populating the "barely got by" numbers, while men will be over-represented at the top of the class.

This isn't even taking into account the natural and documented difference in IQ distribution between the sexes (men populate the extremes of high and low intelligence more than women, women populate the center /moderate percentiles more then men.)

(A) Are the women who shouldn't have even been accepted.

(B) Are women who would have gotten in on their own steam, however, because there are lower standards, there are MORE of them than there would have been.

(C) Are graduates, both male and female.

(D) Is a representation of the talent differential caused by the asymmetrical population between the sexes at the lower end of the curve. This also has a "ratcheting up" effect of standards for the men who now have to compete against a finite number of seats. Better men get in, worse women get in, all because of lower standards for women.

NoSalt · 2012-07-08T23:40:06+00:00

Men/Women, White/Black, Us/Them. How does the world ever expect for discrimination and prejudice to end when people/institutions keep widening the divide between?

Liverotto · 2012-07-08T22:50:50+00:00

At this point we should do like we do in sports: separated genders.

Male doctors go to some Universities and female doctors go to others.

Ergo the evil discrimination will finally end.

P.S.

Of course I would like to go to those Medical Centers administered by those inferior beings like myself.

glassuser · 2012-07-08T23:25:54+00:00

If I'm ever looking for a doctor, and there's a list, and a female from this school is on it, she won't be on it for long.

enkidusfriend · 2012-07-09T01:26:18+00:00

I'll just leave this here: http://www.nosm.ca/classprofiles/

2012-07-09T04:06:43+00:00

To play devil's advocate, isn't effecting the reverse direction standard practice in US college admissions?

no1elsehasthisname · 2012-07-09T07:19:41+00:00

If they can't cut the mustard to get a passing score then why are we allowing them to cut humans afterwards?

uncleoce · 2012-07-09T21:06:33+00:00

[permanently deleted]

2012-07-09T00:56:06+00:00

I think its sad for the women tbh, it would make me (and quite possibly many who live in Austria) question the validity of the female dr's credentials, which should be the same once they are in school. It should be fixed for the better of both genders.

prizzinguard · 2012-07-08T21:53:44+00:00

Did anyone actually read the story? It's an entrance exam. I'm not saying that I agree with what they are doing, but if they want to have roughly the same number of women students as men, then they have the right to do that.

The headline is misleading. They're not being graded differently. They're being admitted differently based on gender.

RossPeterson · 2012-07-08T23:42:10+00:00

Not sure if I should upvote for this injustice, or downvote because it's a faux news article...

Saranodamnedh · 2012-07-08T21:25:22+00:00

Fox news.

Title	Austria med school gives women grading edge. The university is grading men and women differently based on gender.
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	328
Comments	88
Date	July 8, 2012 7:04 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/w8btb/austria_med_school_gives_women_grading_edge_the/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/austria-med-school-gives-women-grading-edge-the.1018353 https://theredarchive.com/post/1018353