Blossfeld, H.-P., Skopek, J., Triventi, M. and Buchholz, S. (Eds.) (2015). Gender, education and employment: an international comparison of school-to-work transitions. eduLIFE Lifelong Learning Series. Vol. 2. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing.
In focus:
Educational trajectories and their consequences for gender differences at the school-to-work transition
Core findings in a nutshell
- Women are outcompeting men in educational attainment across all modern societies
- But women still earn less (except in the UK) and are less likely to start off in authoritative job positions; hence they cannot fully translate their educational gains into better economic occupational outcomes
- However, women enter more prestigious and higher skill level jobs compared to men. This is explained mostly by their better educational qualifications and different occupational choices
- While women and men still enter different types of occupations at labor market entry (horizontal gender segregation), our results underpin the importance of taking into account institutional features of welfare states in order to understand the extent, quality, and change of gender differences at labor market entry
Selected country-specific highlights
- Russia as a former socialist country:
- Compared to other countries, gender differences and especially inequalities at labor market entry used to be rather moderate in Soviet Russia. However, they grew after liberalization reforms despite female advantages in educational level
- Return to more traditional cultural gender stereotypes on professions and domestic roles together with changes in family policies after the Soviet Union collapse reinforced traditional family formation patterns and have resulted in an increase of gender segregation and gender inequality in the first job
- Scandinavian welfare states (Denmark and Sweden):
- Well-known for high gender equality and high female labor market participation
- However, quite pronounced females’ disadvantage in terms of wages, prestige, and entrance into high-status occupations
- Hence, high gender equality in overall labor market participation seems to go hand in hand with even higher gender inequality in vertical – qualitative – gender inequalities
- Yet, Denmark is outstanding regarding its low levels of horizontal gender differences
External collaborators
External collaborators for school-to-work transition phase (in alphabetical order, by country study):
Australia: Michael Dockery
Denmark: Stine Møllegaard Pedersen
Estonia: Ellu Saar, Marge Unt
France: Yaël Brinbaum, Danièle Trancart
Hungary: Daniel Horn, Tamas Keller
Italy: Paolo Barbieri, Giorgio Cutuli, Michele Lugo, Stefanie Scherer
Russia: Dmitry Kurakin
Spain: Pau Miret Gamundi, Daniela Vono de Vilhena
Sweden: Karin Halldén, Juho Härkönen
Switzerland: Sandra Hupka-Brunner, Christian Imdorf
Great Britain: Elina Kilpi-Jakonen
USA: David Bills, Felix Weiss
International comparative study: Christian Brzinsky-Fay