The way higher education actually works is by looking for people who'll make the best medical *students*. What's your basis for saying this? Are you directly involved in the process? I teach in a university, though not in a medical school, and I was told by someone who is involved in the process that they are looking for people who will make good doctors. (Of course, there is a serious "and how do they know if they're succeeding" question, but we were talking about the aim.)
The people who are working part-time that I know are all GPs, and a full-time GP earns on average around 100K pounds these days.
But you haven't addressed the issue of achieving equality by taking away a non-descriminatory competitive advantage. I think that's the wrong way to frame it, when there's nothing canonical about the competition. I mean, there's nothing that's valuable in itself in being good at medical school interviews. What's valuable is being a good doctor, and the interview is only valuable in as far as it can make predictions about that. So if there is evidence that it's making women look better than men, in a way which isn't because women will actually be better doctors, then the interview procedure should be changed.
Let me be explicit and say: if, on the other hand, the evidence is that women are doing better at interview because they actually make better doctors, then I think the interview procedure should stay as it is - it's doing its job. In that case, people who think it's a problem should be asking questions like "how can we educate boys to be more empathetic?" or whatever the issue is, not changing the interview.
Would you get behind, say, making all men in their 30's take a 5-year career break because that's what a lot of women do? Would you consider it discriminatory? Why? Or, why more discriminatory than the existing situation, where women are the ones who work part time and take career breaks to take care of the kids? I'm not trying to be awkward, but I don't understand what you think the connection is between these proposals and the proposal to have different expectations of what 18yos will say in interview, depending on their gender.
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Date: 2008-04-04 01:35 pm (UTC)What's your basis for saying this? Are you directly involved in the process? I teach in a university, though not in a medical school, and I was told by someone who is involved in the process that they are looking for people who will make good doctors. (Of course, there is a serious "and how do they know if they're succeeding" question, but we were talking about the aim.)
The people who are working part-time that I know are all GPs, and a full-time GP earns on average around 100K pounds these days.
But you haven't addressed the issue of achieving equality by taking away a non-descriminatory competitive advantage.
I think that's the wrong way to frame it, when there's nothing canonical about the competition. I mean, there's nothing that's valuable in itself in being good at medical school interviews. What's valuable is being a good doctor, and the interview is only valuable in as far as it can make predictions about that. So if there is evidence that it's making women look better than men, in a way which isn't because women will actually be better doctors, then the interview procedure should be changed.
Let me be explicit and say: if, on the other hand, the evidence is that women are doing better at interview because they actually make better doctors, then I think the interview procedure should stay as it is - it's doing its job. In that case, people who think it's a problem should be asking questions like "how can we educate boys to be more empathetic?" or whatever the issue is, not changing the interview.
Would you get behind, say, making all men in their 30's take a 5-year career break because that's what a lot of women do? Would you consider it discriminatory? Why? Or, why more discriminatory than the existing situation, where women are the ones who work part time and take career breaks to take care of the kids?
I'm not trying to be awkward, but I don't understand what you think the connection is between these proposals and the proposal to have different expectations of what 18yos will say in interview, depending on their gender.