Serious Gender Imbalance in Medical and Dentistry Majors: How to Prevent a Crisis

Abstract

Background and Purpose: Decreased males’ motivation for entering universities has caused a low male/female ratio in different university majors. In 2005-2006 academic year, enrollment of female students in Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences reached 83.14%. This tremendous gender imbalance may lead to the development of a mono-sex system for health service providers and will.affect the social health system. As females constitute the majority of students.in all medical sciences majors, in this study academic achievement of girls is compared to that-of the boys. Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 114 medical and 50 dentistry students who were enrolled at Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences in the spring of 2003. Grade-point average (GPA) was used as a marker for academic achievement. The scores were classified into 3 groups; A (17-20), B (14-16.99) and C (less than 13.99). Data were analyzed by Chi-square test. Results: This study indicated that not only girls constitute the majority of students in the Medicine and Dentistry majors, but also the academic achievement of girls was significantly higher than that of the boys. Among medical students only 2.7% of the boys had A scores, while 18.2% of the girls had A scores. Furthermore, among dentistry students, none of the male students had A scores while 8% of the girls had an A score. Conclusion: It seems that the observed differences, are not related to academic intelligence. These differences may have originated from the decreased motivation in male students for studying efficiently after the enrollment.