A dynamic and contextualized account of the processes and mechanisms underlying gendered career decisions and attainment across the life course.

What is the role of parents, peers and teachers in shaping school experiences and informing the career choice of males and females? Does the school context matter, and to what extent do educational experiences influence young people's self-concept, values and their outlook to the future? Do teenage aspirations influence later outcomes regarding educational attainment and the assumption of work and family related roles? These questions and more are addressed in the chapters of this book, following lives over time and in context. The book is both innovative and timely, moving the discussion of gender inequalities forward, providing a dynamic and contextualized account of the way gendered lives evolve. Chapters address the role of institutional structures and the wider socio-historical context in helping young men and women to realize their ambitions. A unique feature is the longitudinal perspective, examining the role of multiple interlinked influences on individual life planning and attainment.

Annotation.

"We use data from the youth component of the British Household Panel Survey to examine gender differences in educational attitudes and aspirations among 11-15 year olds. While girls have more positive aspirations and attitudes than boys, the impacts of gender on children's attitudes and aspirations vary significantly with parental education level, parental attitudes to education, child's age and the indirect cost of education. Boys are more responsive than girls to positive parental characteristics, while educational attitudes and aspirations of boys deteriorate at a younger age than those of girls. These findings have implications for policies designed to reduce educational attainment differences between boys and girls as they identify factors which exacerbate the educational disadvantage of boys relative to girls."--Author abstract.

Gender inequalities in education – in terms of systematic variations in access to educational institutions, in competencies, school marks, and educational certificates along the axis of gender – have tremendously changed over the course of the 20th century. Although this does not apply to all stages and areas of the educational career, it is particularly obvious looking at upper secondary education. Before the major boost of educational expansion in the 1960s, women’s participation in upper secondary general education, and their chances to successfully finish this educational pathway, have been lower than men’s. However, towards the end of the 20th century, women were outperforming men in many European countries and beyond. The international contributions to this book attempt to shed light on the mechanisms behind gender inequalities and the changes made to reduce this inequality. Topics explored by the contributors include gender in science education in the UK; women’s education in Luxembourg in the 19th and 20th century; the ‘gender gap’ debates and their rhetoric in the UK and Finland; sociological perspectives on the gender-equality discourse in Finland; changing gender differences in West Germany in the 20th century; the interplay of subjective well-being and educational attainment in Switzerland; and a psychological perspective on gender identities, gender-related perceptions, students’ motivation, intelligence, personality, and the interaction between student and teacher gender. This book was originally published as a special issue of Educational Research.

While powerful gender inequalities remain in American society, women have made substantial gains and now largely surpass men in one crucial arena: education. Women now outperform men academically at all levels of school, and are more likely to obtain college degrees and enroll in graduate school. What accounts for this enormous reversal in the gender education gap? In The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What It Means for American Schools, Thomas DiPrete and Claudia Buchmann provide a detailed and accessible account of women’s educational advantage and suggest new strategies to improve schooling outcomes for both boys and girls. The Rise of Women opens with a masterful overview of the broader societal changes that accompanied the change in gender trends in higher education. The rise of egalitarian gender norms and a growing demand for college-educated workers allowed more women to enroll in colleges and universities nationwide. As this shift occurred, women quickly reversed the historical male advantage in education. By 2010, young women in their mid-twenties surpassed their male counterparts in earning college degrees by more than eight percentage points. The authors, however, reveal an important exception: While women have achieved parity in fields such as medicine and the law, they lag far behind men in engineering and physical science degrees. To explain these trends, The Rise of Women charts the performance of boys and girls over the course of their schooling. At each stage in the education process, they consider the gender-specific impact of factors such as families, schools, peers, race and class. Important differences emerge as early as kindergarten, where girls show higher levels of essential learning skills such as persistence and self-control. Girls also derive more intrinsic gratification from performing well on a day-to-day basis, a crucial advantage in the learning process. By contrast, boys must often navigate a conflict between their emerging masculine identity and a strong attachment to school. Families and peers play a crucial role at this juncture. The authors show the gender gap in educational attainment between children in the same families tends to be lower when the father is present and more highly educated. A strong academic climate, both among friends and at home, also tends to erode stereotypes that disconnect academic prowess and a healthy, masculine identity. Similarly, high schools with strong science curricula reduce the power of gender stereotypes concerning science and technology and encourage girls to major in scientific fields. As the value of a highly skilled workforce continues to grow, The Rise of Women argues that understanding the source and extent of the gender gap in higher education is essential to improving our schools and the economy. With its rigorous data and clear recommendations, this volume illuminates new ground for future education policies and research.

Two remarkable trends concerning women’s educational and labor market outcomes in modern Western societies can be observed. Firstly, in recent decades, women have been catching up with, and have even overtaken, men in educational attainment. Secondly, women continue to choose educations and occupations in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) less often than men. This Research Topic will focus upon these gender-specific trends, with a view to analyzing (some of) their causes and consequences.