Gender segregation in education

Meulders et al. (2010) have defined the term gender segregation as the tendency “of wom-en and mwom-en to work in differwom-ent sectors and occupations.” (p. 9) Work and education are specific societal fields in which gender is embedded as an important structural principle that divides ’appropriate’ occupations and sectors for men and women. Segregation concepts offer definitions of horizontal and vertical segregation. Although phenomena of horizontal and vertical segregation become visible on the labour market, the roots of segregation already appear in the educational system.

Horizontal segregation describes the under- and over-representation of a certain group of people (gender, migration, class) in different sectors of occupations and educational path-ways. (See Bettio & Verashchagina, 2009) It seems to be a persistent, almost ‘immutable’

characteristic of current socio-economic systems. (See Blau & Ferber, 1987)

Gender segregation strongly appears on the labour market, but it is already visible in educa-tion. In education we can find typical female and male areas. Though this has changed sub-stantially over time and varies considerably across states, in some states boys and girls predominantly choose gender-typical occupations. (See Fényes, 2010) This contributes to a gender-segregated labour market.

Box 2.1 – Examples of gender segregation in education Austria

Men are still over-represented among scientists. This is especially true for physics, mathematics and engineering. Men represent the major part of professors at Austrian universities. (See Scambor &

Scambor, 2011)⁵⁴ Belgium

An uneven distribution of girls and boys among forms of education, courses and options is obvious.

The distribution of enrolment in secondary education is sexually differentiated by types of education:

boys are more numerous in vocational education than in general education. In terms of study fields, girls are also more present in the social and caring sectors and boys in technical courses (confirming horizontal segregation). In technical and vocational education in particular, the arrival of girls in tradi-tionally male educational sectors is perceived as an invasion, while boys who make untypical choices are subject to judgments and homophobic behaviour from other boys. (See Wuiame, 2011)

Germany

When choosing vocational trainings, young men tend to opt for technical areas or manual work, whereas women are more likely to opt for work with more communicative and social aspects. For these reasons, it is assumed that the growth of the service sector would lead to a decrease in job chances for men. (See Gärtner, Rieske &Puchert, 2011)

Slovakia

The proportion of male tertiary education graduates has been permanently decreasing during last years. Since 2006, the share of young men is less than 50% (Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic).

This indicates that boys have lower study ambitions than girls. Despite this fact, men´s situation in terms of employment and remuneration persists to be superior to that of women. (See Szapuová, 2011)

54 Country reports are cited without page numbers.

Horizontal segregation in upper secondary education

The gender distribution in upper secondary and tertiary education shows some main tenden-cies that point to the persistent gender segregation in the educational system.

With the exception of Ireland, young men are predominantly represented in vocational edu-cation⁵⁵ if compared to young women. Furthermore, a great variation of male graduates in vocational education is obvious across Europe.

Figure 2.2 Male and female graduates in upper secondary education enrolled in voca-tional stream (as % of all upper secondary education) by country, 2009

Source: Eurostat, LFS (online data code: educ_grad2); extracted on Jan. 9^th, 2012; vocational stream includes pre-vocational or pre-technical programme orientation and pre-vocational or technical programme orientation; rest of the graduates are graduates in upper secondary education – general programme orientation

More young men than young women in Europe attend vocational education. Therefore gender-sensitive initiatives are highly recommendable in order to encourage boys and young men to choose untypical fields of vocational education. But again we have to be sensi-tive to the diversity of historical and cultural traditions (e.g. the former egalitarian cultures in the Post-socialist countries encouraging more women to embrace vocational education), so that we do not put countries on the same equal footing in reading the statistical data.

A causal link between vocational education and learning outcomes of boys may be drawn. Results on educational achievements show a significant gender gap referring to liter-acy skills like reading, in which girls outperform boys and may more often become eligible for studying.

55 „Education and training which aims to equip people with knowledge, know-how, skills and/or competences required in particular occupations or more broadly on the labour market.

Source: adapted from European Training Foundation, 1997. SOURCE: Terminology of European education and training policy-a selection of 100 key terms. CEDEFOP, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2008.” http://www.eqavet.eu/qa/gns/glossary/v/vocational-education-and-training.aspx

Gendered patterns in different fields of studies are visible: girls tend to be predominantly present in the social and caring fields of education, while the rate of boys is high in engineering, manufacturing and construction. Figure 2.3 shows the proportion of male and female students enrolled in upper secondary vocational streams in the fields of engineer-ing, manufacturing and construction. Romania, Bulgaria and Estonia are countries with a relatively high proportion of women in these fields, reflecting their cultural and political histo-ries, while some other countries show a low participation of women, with percentages below 10%. There are countries with a relatively high proportion of male students in these fields:

Estonia, Cyprus, Norway and Lithuania show rates above 65%. At the other end we find the Netherlands, Spain, Malta and Austria, where less than 50% of male students are enrolled in engineering, manufacturing and construction.

Figure 2.3 Percentage of male and female students in the field of engineering, manufac-turing and construction as % of all male and female students in upper sec-ondary vocational streams, 2009

Source: Eurostat, LFS (online data code: educ_grad5); extracted on Jan. 10^th, 2012; vocational stream includes pre-vocational or pre-technical programme orientation and pre-vocational or technical programme orientation

An attempt was made to provide a comparable picture about horizontal segregation in upper secondary education. A cluster analysis, based on the relation of the factors of male partici-pation in the male dominated fields of ‘engineering, manufacturing and construc-tion’/’agriculture and veterinary’ and male participation in the female dominated fields of ‘hu-manities and arts’ and ‘services’, showed different clusters for upper secondary education (see figure 2.4) and tertiary education (see figure 2.6).

Figure 2.4 Country groups ‘horizontal segregation upper secondary education’: country groups according to men’s participation in male and female dominated study fields, 2009

Source and explanation: Eurostat, LFS (online data code: educ_grad5); extracted on Jan. 9^th, 2012; calculation of participation in specific vocational field as percentage of all participants in pre-vocational or pre-technical programme orientation and vocational or technical programme orientation in upper secondary education; two factors have been calculated: “factor_male dominated fields” has been calculated with the variables male participation in the fields „engineering, manufacturing and construction” and “agriculture and veterinary”;

“factor_female dominated fields” has been calculated with the variables male participation in the fields

“humanities and arts” and “services”. Female dominated fields are those in which at least 60% of students are female in EU27, male dominated fields are those in which at least 60% of the students are male in EU27. On each factor, smaller (negative) values represent lower percentage of men; higher (positive) values represent higher percentages of men. With these two factors a scatter plot has been drawn and the country groups have been calculated by a cluster analysis; method used: Ward, 5 solutions, own calculations.

If countries converge in the centre of a cluster, the differences between these countries are small, big distances between countries in a cluster refer to bigger differences between coun-tries. The following groups of countries have emerged from the material. (See annex 2.5)

„ Romania shows indicators for a relatively low degree of segregation, a comparatively low percentage of men studying male dominated fields like engineering and agriculture and their respective percentage in female dominated fields being above average in the sam-ple.

„ Countries like Denmark, Cyprus and the Netherlands show a high participation rate of men in female study fields, which is exposed as an indicator of a low degree of segrega-tion, but an average to high percentage of men also enrolled in male dominated studies (indicator of a high degree of segregation).

„ Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Iceland show relatively low degrees of male enrolment in female dominated studies, and average degrees of male enrolment in male dominated studies. Especially the first indicator points to the endurance of cultural traditions of gen-der hierarchy that need to be dealt with in education at an early age, so that more

oppor-tunities will be opened up as young people experience the benefits of gender equality.

With the decline of traditional industries that provided work for working class boys across Europe it is important for young men to also consider a wider range of work, for instance in the services and caring fields that they have traditionally rejected as ‘women’s work’.

„ In countries like Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland and Sweden men’s participation in male dominated studies is below EU average and their participation in female dominated study fields is around EU average.

„ All other European and EFTA countries show men’s participation in male dominated study fields as being around and above EU average (indicator of segregation) and their representation in female dominated studies as being around EU average.

Horizontal segregation in tertiary education

An overall perspective on tertiary education outlines the ‘immutable’ character and persis-tence of gender segregation in the educational system. In 2009 men still represented the majority of students (ISCED 5-6⁵⁶) in the fields of engineering, manufacturing and construc-tion in all EU member states and EFTA states. Women were predominant in educaconstruc-tion as well as in health and welfare. In many EU member states and EFTA states the participation rate of men in the study field of education even declined from 2000–2009 (except Bulgaria, Cyprus, Lithuania, Slovenia, Finland, Iceland and Norway). (See annex 2.6) The same pat-tern appears in the field of health and welfare in almost all countries in the same period of time (except UK, Sweden, Slovenia, Cyprus and Netherlands).

Figure 2.5 Percentage of male students (ISCED 5-6) enrolled in the fields ‘engineering, manufacturing and construction’ and ‘health and welfare’ - as % of male and female students in this field, 2009

56 With ISCED (International Standard Classification of Education) the following levels of education have been clasified: ISCED level 0 = pre-primary education, ISCED level 1 = primary education, ISCED level 2 = lower secondary education, ISCED level 3 = upper secondary education, ISCED level 4 = post-secondary non-tertiary education, ISCED level 5 = non-tertiary education (first stage), ISCED leve 6 = non-tertiary education (second stage).

Source: Eurostat, LFS (online data code: educ_itertp); extracted on Oct. 31^st, 2011; for Greece and Luxembourg no data are available; own calculations

Fényes (2010) points out that horizontal segregation is almost constant, despite the fact that women increasingly participate in higher education. The same trend is obvious on the labour market, where gender segregation has hardly changed in the past decades (see chapter 3), although the employment of women has risen. (See Bradley, 2000)

Again, a cluster analysis was calculated across countries to provide a comparable picture about horizontal segregation in tertiary education. (See annex 2.7) The cluster is based on two factors: male participation in the predominantly male dominated fields of ‘engineering, manufacturing and construction’ as well as ‘sciences, mathematics and computing’, and male participation in the predominantly female dominated fields of ‘education’, ‘humanities and arts’ and ‘social sciences, business and law’. Small (negative) values represent a lower per-centage of men, and high (positive) values represent higher perper-centages of men.

Figure 2.6 Country groups ‘horizontal segregation in tertiary education’: country groups according to men’s participation in male and female dominated study fields, 2009

Source and explanation: Eurostat, LFS (online data code: educ_itertp); extracted on Jan. 9^th, 2012; calculation of participation in specific vocational field as percentage of all participants in pre-vocational or pre-technical programme orientation and vocational or technical programme orientation in upper secondary education; two factors have been calculated: “factor_male dominated fields” has been calculated with the variables male participation in the fields „engineering, manufacturing and construction” and “science, mathematics and computing”; “factor_female dominated fields” has been calculated with the variables male participation in the fields “education”, “humanities and arts” and “social science, business and law”. Female dominated fields are those in which at least 60% of students are female in EU27, male dominated fields are those in which at least 60% of the students are male in EU27. With these two factors a scatter plot has been drawn and the country groups have been calculated by a cluster analysis; method used: Ward, 6 solutions, own calculations.

Country clusters for tertiary education provide a different picture compared to upper secon-dary education.

„ With the exception of Finland, all Northern European countries as well as some Post-socialist countries (Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria) and some Southern European coun-tries (Spain, Portugal and Cyprus) appear as less segregated country groups with a comparatively low percentage of men studying male dominated fields like engineering and mathematics and over average rates of men in female dominated fields. In countries like Romania and Italy men’s participation rate in male dominated studies is below EU average, while their participation in female dominated study fields is slightly below EU average.

„ Central European countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland show high rates of men studying female dominated fields, but high rates of men enrolled in male dominated studies too.

„ Men’s participation in male and female dominated study fields is around and above EU average in countries like Austria, UK, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus.

„ Post-socialist countries predominantly show the following pattern: men are over-represented in male dominated studies and under-over-represented in female dominated stud-ies. Both are indicators for a high degree of segregation.

„ In countries like Estonia and Latvia the rate of men in female dominated studies is very low. Similar results are outlined for upper secondary education. (See figure 2.4) This shows the persistence of ideas of gender segregation in former communist societies that had experienced gender equality as an ideal that was historically imposed, largely in rela-tion to work.