Higher education and careers: gender disparities persist

What gender inequalities are observed in higher education? What disciplines or orientations are concerned?

Although women’s educational attainment is now higher than men’s, we do observe considerable gender differences in initial and continuing higher education; see below. Educational gender segregation has receded overall, but women are still underrepresented in some disciplines or general orientations, notably the most selective, and in the sciences overall (excepting medicine), where they account for 30% of students in engineering but 67% of those in the health sciences. These differences are consistent with high school student orientations and disciplinary choices, as boys more often opt for the sciences, but differences are also found across similar disciplinary choices.  When indicating their preferred higher education disciplines or programs through France’s national Parcoursup system [which then processes this and other information on the prospective student in order to determine and inform students of their future higher education options], girls also tend to aim for lower educational degrees in less selective types of academic or professional training programs than boys: they continue to be a minority (40%) in highly selective preparatory class programs and diploma-delivering technical training programs. 

What about in continuing education?

Women have a greater tendency than men to continue learning through formal education and training: they take longer training programs and more of them. But in a CÉREQ study (Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur les Qualifications) of data from the DEFIS panel study on employee training done with the researcher and economics professor Guillemette de Larquier, we showed that, here again, men and women do not take the same types of courses or training and that the ways they pursue that learning also differ: women take programs during their free time and use their own resources to pay for them, while fewer women than men indicate that a given course will be useful in getting a new type of job or a promotion

What role do students’ intentions for their future family-work balance play in their educational trajectories?

The literature on gender inequalities has clearly established that how parents balance work life and family life has an adverse effect on mothers’ careers but not on fathers’. This is particularly the case when children arrive, an effect called the “child penalty.” We have found the same result for ongoing occupational training: the birth of children slows mothers’ access to training but not fathers’.

Meanwhile, few higher education students have children, as reflected in current demographic trends. On average in France in 2023, people’s age at the birth of their first child was 30.9, and in general that age rises with educational attainment. Women’s average age at the birth of their first child is 29.1. On average, then, higher education students in France, regardless of sex, do not have a need to answer the question of how to balance their studies with having children. However, it is likely that anticipating how to do so later in life already affects academic and professional choices in ways that differ by gender. Studies have shown that girls integrate their future family-work life balance intentions into their occupational plans very early on, and that they go on to make education and profession-related choices, described as “compromises,” that are consistent with those intentions. Moreover, it seems that male and female students experience higher education differently. This particular period in life requires managing time allotment between course work, personal work, possible paid work, time with family and friends, leisure activities, activities in organizations and/or volunteer work, possible time spent helping a disabled or dependent relative, etc. Yet research seldom probes the question of how young people allot and balance their time between these different social activities during higher education, especially not from a gender perspective. This is precisely what my colleague Vincent Lignon and I are investigating, by way of data from the FamEmp survey (INED 2024). This survey’s large sample of young people enables researchers to study their practices and experiences of balancing different social activities by sex, as well as how those practices and experiences are related to differentiated future family and work intentions or plans.