Madam, – It was heartening to see Gemma Hussey’s de-mystification of the new Health Professionals Admission Test (August 20th). Given the public welcome for its “success” in creating gender balance in admission to medicine, I look forward to official support for procedures to create gender balance at senior management level in the universities since 82 per cent of those in such positions are men.
Is it a co-incidence that measures to promote gender balance are only embraced when they benefit (middle-class) men? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Prof Paul Finucane, foundation head of the graduate entry medical school at the University of Limerick is quoted as saying, “The pendulum had swung too far in favour of females. It is important we have a system that doesn’t disadvantage males in the way that 40 to 50 years ago it disadvantaged females”, (“Welcome for more men doing medicine”, August 18th). This is a most disturbing pronouncement coming from an educator and his comparison makes no sense. The professor rightly points out that the educational system disadvantaged females in the past, but it is disingenuous to intimate that the system today in any way similarly disadvantages males.
Sean McCann, professor of academic medicine and director of undergraduate teaching and learning at Trinity College Dublin, has no qualms about telling it like it is. He is quoted in the same article as saying that one of the original aims in amending the entry system to medical school was to change the gender balance.
If this is true it is not even comparable to moving the goal posts, rather it as crude as putting your foot out to trip up the opposition. It is time for the Minister for Education to clarify. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Given our new-found concern for gender balance in the professions (well, the important, prestigious and well-remunerated profession of medicine), may I ask when we will introduce an aptitude test for our politicians? Or members of State boards? Or Government nominees on bank boards? Or presenters on State-supported RTÉ? Or Government nominees to the Seanad? Or engineering university courses?
Or perhaps we’ll simply move to figuring how to ensure that these bright young women who are out-performing boys at Leaving Cert go on to earn 20 per cent less than them within a short number of years of starting their career? The glass ceiling seems to have been transformed into reinforced glass over the years.
Let’s transform our concern for underachieving boys into concern for true equality in society. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Gemma Hussey (August 20th) is “extremely disappointed” that an aptitude test has been introduced for medical studies because it leads to “the exclusion of clever young women”. But by the same reasoning, presumably the previous scheme must have led to the exclusion of people with an aptitude for medicine?
Surely Ms Hussey wouldn’t support a return to such a scheme? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – S Lydon (August 21st) appears to be under the impression that a person can gain entry to medicine without having studied any of the sciences (biology, physics or chemistry) for the Leaving Certificate.
The entry requirements for undergraduate entry to medicine are well documented by UCC, UCD, UCG, and TCD. Entry to medicine in those universities requires that students have studied at least one (but mostly two) science subjects for the Leaving Certificate. The aptitude test does not change this. – Yours, etc,