Japanese Medical School Found Guilty Of Making Entrance Exams Easier For Men
A medical institution accused of making entrance exams more difficult for females will finally have to compensate the victims. This case is a rare one where the victims got the justice. Usually, such cases don’t go this way.
Initially, the university in question, Jutendo University, refused such claims. The academy said it had raised the requirements for female applicants since they had more experience than males similar to their age and were more adept in “communicating,” which confer them advantages over male counterparts.
The school also stated that it refused to accept women because of the shortage of female dormitories. It is compulsory in Jutendo Uni for freshers to stay in dormitories.
However, the court denied the claims on Thursday. The court ruled in favor of 13 former female applicants who brought a lawsuit against the university in 2019.
The judge who presided over the case cited evidence that, even when the school increased its female dormitories, it would not accept female applicants due to their gender. The judge found that the tests were “unfair,” thus Juntendo University is to pay about 8 million yen ($62,546) in emotional damages to applicants. On top of that, he added that such decision could even have a negative impact to future female applicants.
The women filed suit against the school following a government probe in 2018 that revealed that medical schools altered admissions tests to favor male applicants. The decision on Thursday was the first case of the many lawsuits of similar matter. It could set the stage for more success for female students applying to Japanese educational institutions.
Of the 81 institutions that it studied and analyzed, the government discovered four institutions with discriminatory policies, including Juntendo and the renowned Tokyo Medical University.
The first time the authorities announced their findings, Japanese media reported that certain admissions officers believed that women were likely to leave the medical field regardless or work shorter hours to be able to raise children.
The former applicants were happy with Thursday’s ruling. Each received between 300,000 to ($2,346) to 900,000 to ($7,036) as damages. The money was designed to pay for transportation and test costs of 60,000 ($469) for each exam.
However, their lawyers claim that the compensation was not enough. Especially to acknowledge the emotional turmoil that the women were going through after the university’s biasness.
The court didn’t award the total amount sought–$427,000–because the women’s emotional damages were somewhat alleviated when the school got rid of its discriminatory practices following the government probe.
However, even if the institution left its discriminatory practices, women are still suffering from an unfair system of discrimination. Yasuko Sasa, one of the lawyers representing former students, spoke to VICE World News.
Thirteen female students took entrance exams to the university in 2011 until the year. Two of them would have been able to pass if the college hadn’t altered the question.
Source: VICE News
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