NASP International and Interdisciplinary Seminars

Tomáš Katrňák (Masaryk University, Brno)

Is the gender-gap reversal a feedback loop?
Social factors influencing gender-gap inequalities in tertiary education in European countries 

Chair: Gabriele Ballarino (NASP - University of Milan)

24 May 2024, h. 14.30
Room A
NASP Graduate School in Social and Political Sciences
Via Pace, 10 - Milan

Abstract

The educational structures of the European populations have changed significantly over the last 20 years. The average proportion of young people (aged 25-34) in European countries who had attained tertiary education increased from 25% to 41% from 2000 to 2020. This educational expansion has been accompanied by a change of the gender ratio in favor of women and the growth of a gender-gap reversal (GGR). Women's chances to be enrolled in higher education have increased faster than men's, as has their tertiary education attainment. Gender gap reversal (GGR) at the tertiary education is a completely new situation in the history of European educational systems. We analyze social factors that influence the trends in GGR in tertiary education in European countries. We use the first round of Generations and Gender Surveys (GGS-I) data collected under the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP) and deal with 12 European countries. We analyze the effects of parental educational hypogamy (marriage where the wife's educational level is higher than the husband's), parental educational homogamy (marriage where the husband's educational level is the same as the wife's), parental divorce, and single-parent family.
We argue that these factors increase tertiary education attainment by gender and thus the GGR rises. The higher level of GGR then reinforces the prevalence of these factors on higher tertiary education for women, boosting gender inequality at the tertiary education level in favor of women. Based on this argument we test whether GGR is a positive feedback loop phenomenon.
The results show that this interpretation could be plausible. GGR can be understood as a self-feeding system by which its increase is given.

This seminar is part of the NASP International and Interdisciplinary Seminars Series 2024.