The majority of Irish lawyers, pharmacists, dentists, doctors, and physiotherapists in the future will be women. Nursing and primary-school teaching have long been dominated by women; now other professions are heading the same way. The latest figures show that females now outnumber males 59% to 41% in the country's seven universities.

In the entire tertiary sector, including institutes of technology, the figure is 55% to 45%. In every discipline in the universities with the exception of engineering and science, women outnumber men by significant margins. On current trends, however, science will also have a female majority of students by the end of the decade.

Even agriculture, long a male-dominated subject in Irish universities, is now 54% female. It is expected that teaching will continue to be female dominated as more than 77% of education students are women. The number of female pharmacy and dentistry graduates has reached 70%, with women graduates in law at 62%.

In medical courses, women were three times more likely to earn a spot over male applicants, at least until this year when an aptitude test was introduced for the first time. The test scores were combined with results from the schools' Leaving Certificate examination to select students for entry into one of the country's five undergraduate medical schools.

The use of the aptitude test has proven to be somewhat controversial. The HPAT-Ireland test measures a candidate's logical reasoning and problem-solving skills as well as non-verbal reasoning and the ability to understand the thoughts, behaviour and-or intentions of people. It does not test academic knowledge and candidates do not require special understanding of any academic discipline.

Males did better than females in the test with the result that a higher percentage of males got into medicine this year than in previous years - still not as many as females but an improvement, nevertheless.

The change led to accusations in some quarters that the real purpose of the test was to increase the percentage of males in medicine to miligate against the high numbers of female doctors who will take time off to look after children.

This was denied by the Education Ministry which pushed for the change to end the situation whereby medicine was the sole preserve of students who obtained nearly perfect results in their Leaving Certificate.

Those results are converted into 'points' for college entry and the maximum a student can get is 600 points. Latest figures show that 61% of those who score 450 points or higher in the Leaving Certificate are female.

The educational underachievement among males is beginning to worry researchers, teachers and politicians. By 2005, 44% of the female population between the ages of 25 and 34 had some form of higher education qualification compared with 35% of their male counterparts. This gap will likely widen as boys account for more than two-thirds of early school leavers.

john.walshe@uw-news.com

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