Transcript Power Point Presenation

By Eric Raicovich
4/24/03
The 1970’s experienced a large increase in the number of
females being admitted into medical school, why?
1929 – 4% of those admitted to med school were women
1970 – 11% were women
1984 – 33% were women
Can you explain this phenomena?
Sex-role socialization
Direct discrimination from medical schools
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?
(a bit more evidence...using confidence intervals)
Observe the table on your handout…
1967
1972
1977
No. of schools with discrimination
scores  10
No. of schools with discrimination
scores of 1-9
1
0
0
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
Mean
4
4
1
-.48
-1.64
-.17
Standard deviation
5.00
3.21
2.07
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
  1.96
s
n
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:
 .48  1.96
5.00
92
 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.