the incorporation of women into higher education: paradoxical outcomes?

The Incorporation of Women into Higher Education: Paradoxical Outcomes?Author(s): Karen BradleyReviewed work(s):Source: Sociology of Education, Vol. 73, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 1-18Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2673196 .Accessed: 23/08/2012 07:14

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The Incorporation of Women into Higher Education:

Paradoxical Outcomes?

Karen Bradley Western Washington University

Unlike the extensive cross-national research on occupational sex segregation, sex segregation within higher education has yet to be empirically examined compar- atively. This article reports analyses for a wide range of countries from 1 965 through 1990, using two measures of gender differentiation by field of study. The results indicate that gender differentiation has declined surprisingly little. Women are more likely to graduate from education, arts, humanities, social sciences, and law, and men are more likely to graduate from natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering. Few differences are found between more- and less economically developed countries. These findings echo those in the occupational sex segregation literature.

D _hrough the second half of the 20th century, countries around the world struggled to strike a bal-

ance between women's participation in the private sphere, notably the family, and in public institutions, such as the economy, education, and the polity. The incorporation of women into public institutions, particularly the labor market, has been viewed as a key strategy for establishing parity between men and women in adult social and political life. Because household labor is typically uncompensated, participation in the labor force is an important way for women to accrue resources that can shift the balance of power between men and women.

Since occupational success is highly correlated with educational attainment in both developed and developing countries, the incorporation of women into the education system has been widely believed to be an effective strategy for increasing gender parity in the occupational structure. And to a certain extent, that has been true.

Figure 1 shows that women's representation in colleges and universities throughout the world is increasingly approaching the gender parity point of 50 percent. In a few countries, including the United States, women's representation in higher education at the undergraduate level exceeds that of men. This increase in women's educational attainment is closely tracked by women's participation in the labor force.

Despite these increases, the occupational distribution of women and men has changed surprisingly little over time. Figure 2 plots the degree of occupational sex segregation, averaged for 29 countries throughout the world from 1960 through 1990. Occupational sex segregation was measured by the index of dissimilarity (D), which represents the percentage of women (or men) who would have to change occupations for the occupational distribution by sex to correspond to the overall representation by sex in the labor force.1 Values for D range from 0 (a pro-

Sociology of Education 2000, Vol. 73 (January): 1-18 1

50

40-

i30-

0

| 20-

E 10 0

1960 1970 1980 1990 Year

Figure 1. Women's Share of Higher Education: 1960-90

Note: Women's share of higher education (or the number of women enrolled in higher education/number of students enrolled in higher education) was obtained from various volumes of the UNESCO Statistical Yearbook (1965-93). The worldwide average is computed on the basis of all countries for which data are available for 1 960-90 in 1 0-year intervals, N = 55.

portional distribution) to 1 (perfect segregation). As of 1990, 36 percent of women or men, on average, would have needed to change occupations for there to be proportional representation across occupational fields in these countries.2

This level of occupational segregation is striking, particularly in light of the increases in women's access to higher education. And it raises an interesting question: Why has increasing women's participation in higher

education not led to increased gender parity in the labor market? Is it a paradox that the increase in women's educational attainment has not resulted in greater parity in the occupational sphere? The strong association between education and occupational status suggests that it is.

In this article, I argue that the failure of greater gender parity in education to produce greater gender parity in the labor market is not a paradox at all. Rather, I suggest that the

- o. 0.5-

b>03 0.4-

0.3-

x 0.2

c 0.1 0

1960 1970 1980 1990 Year

Figure 2. Occupation Sex-Segregation Index: 1960-90

Note: The average D for 1960-80 was computed by the author from values reported by Jacobs and Lim (1995). The average D for 1990 was calculated from Semyonov and Jones (1999). The same subset of 29 countries is used for each time point.

Incorporation of Women into Higher Education 3

key to understanding the relationship between gender parity in educational attainment and gender parity in the labor market lies in the different distributions of women and men across fields within higher education. If men and women enroll in different courses of study in higher education, then increasing women's educational attainment may have little impact on gender differences in the occupational structure.

This hypothesis has been explored in case studies that have suggested that women in a variety of countries are more likely than men to enroll in programs of study that tend to lead to lower-status occupations.3 The distribution of women and men among academic fields has not been empirically examined over time on a cross-national basis, however. In this article, I examine in some detail women's and men's representation in several fields of study from 1965 through 1990 in diverse national settings. These decades were characterized by the dramatic expansion and redef- inition of systems of higher education worldwide. During the International Decade for Women (1975-85), international organizations and governments initiated programs to raise women's status, especially through the expansion of educational access. Therefore, this period is of particular interest with regard to women's representation in higher education.

SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXT

Education as a social institution is construct- ed, in both structure and outcomes, by a variety of actors and ideas in national and international environments (Bradley and Ramirez 1996; Meyer, Boli, and Thomas 1987). Cultural reproduction theorists call attention to the ways in which educational structures mirror and reproduce the contested relations and values that shape society at large, including those concerning gender (Grant, Horan, and Watts-Warren 1994; Kelly and Nihlen 1982; Moi 1991). One such contested notion among both intellectuals and activists is whether women should be considered indi- viduals whose status should be measured in relation to that of men or whether women

have distinctive qualities that set them apart from men.4

On the one hand, pressures are exerted at the global and national levels to equalize the participation of men and women in activities in the public sphere, with particular emphasis on widening access to education and employment. Such efforts build on the liberal premise that women, like men, are capable of reason and academic success (see the discussion on the liberal underpinnings of international efforts to raise women's status in Berkovitch and Bradley 1999). The assump- tion behind such efforts is that once barriers to access are removed, women will make educational choices similar to those of men. This way of thinking focuses on giving women access to men's spheres and pays little attention to men's choices. That is, it is not suggested that men's choices would change, only that women's choices would become more like those of men.

Because higher education is the route to better-paying, higher-status positions, one might expect that women would enroll in and graduate from programs of study that would lead to better-paying occupations in the future. Researchers have found that in the United States, for example, young men and women place equal value on extrinsic rewards (income, prestige, and security) associated with future occupational preferences (Marini, Fan, Finley, and Beutel 1996). Thus, a rational-choice model might lead one to expect that women would be as likely as men to graduate with degrees in business, law, engineering, and the natural sciences-fields of study that are linked to relatively high-status, high-paying occupations. Similarly, men and women would be unlikely to enroll in fields that are typically associated with lower pay and social prestige, such as education and nursing.

On the other hand, cultural scripts empha- sizing the nurturing role of women may encourage girls and women to make educational choices that lead to caretaking occupations, despite these occupations' lower rate of economic return on investment. These scripts are based, in part, on perceived labor market options that are highly gender differentiated throughout the world (M. Charles 1992;

4 Bradle

Jacobs and Lim 1995). Educational choices also build on normative assumptions that associate so-called feminine values with fields, such as the humanities and arts, and mascu- line values with business, the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering. Thus, as cultural reproduction theorists predict, the educational choices of men and women may reproduce the gender-differentiated patterns of societies.

As systems of higher education expanded from the 1960s through the 1980s, women gained increased access to a social institution that was undergoing significant change. The specific course of transformation varied by country, reflecting national differences in organizational structure and priorities. For example, the Robbins report of 1963 recom- mended the expansion of educational facili- ties in the United Kingdom in response to the class bias identified in the structure of higher education. It included some assumptions about gender-differentiated education, as the following excerpt illustrates:

Training for many of the occupations open to girls does not at present fall within the defini- tion of higher education adopted in our Report. But rising professional requirements may in future lead to more girls entering those occupations by means of full-time courses in higher education. (quoted in Jones and Castle 1986:291)

In the 1950s and 1 960s, female-dominated fields, such as teaching, nursing, and social work, often did not require college degrees. As these semiprofessions strove for professional status, they raised the standards for credentialing. Thus, even if women had sim- ply held their own in women-dominated occupations, the additional credentials required by these professions would have driven women to attain higher levels of education. As a result, one would expect the enrollment of women in higher education to increase, but in a gender-segregated manner. The empirical question that remains is the following: To what extent did gender differentiation and/or gender parity characterize women's and men's participation in higher education, even as the size and mission of higher education were changing in countries

throughout the world? The next section describes the data and measurement tech- niques I used to examine this question.

DATA AND MEASUREMENT

Data on the fields of study of graduates in countries throughout the world were obtained from various volumes of the UNESCO Statistical Yearbook (UNESCO 1965-93). The International Standard Classi- fication of Education (ISCED) was designed by UNESCO in the 1970s to "serve as an instrument for assembling, compiling and presenting comparable indicators and statistics of education ... invariant to the particular circumstances of national educational systems" (UNESCO 1997:1). UNESCO uses this field-of-study classification system to catego- rize students and graduates. In the tables and figures that follow, the data on graduates are examined. In some countries, students may change majors several times during the course of their enrollment. Therefore, looking at the gender distribution of graduates gives one a better picture of women's pattern of participation in higher education than that obtained by considering students.

There are limitations, of course, to using this data source. For example, in some years, some countries did not include all institutions of higher education in their statistics or report data consistently in a manner that allows for a direct translation into the ISCED categories. I took these problems into account in con- structing the tables presented here. I exclud- ed countries without comparable or consis- tent data, as well as countries with fewer than 1,000 graduates in a given year, since small numerical variations in distributions can give misleading information about proportional variation.

The countries included in the study are diverse in level of economic development, structure and size of the educational system, and geographic location.5 Western countries (those in Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) were overrepresented, particularly in 1 965. No African countries appeared until 1 975. The most diverse set of countries was found in the

Incorporation of Women into Higher Education S

1990 data. All the reported statistics were calculated for each year on the basis of the total number of countries that met the criteria for the data described earlier. All reported trends were also compared to a much smaller (and less diverse) constant set of countries.

Before 1978, a 10-category ISCED system was the standard (see Appendix A). Since 1 978, UNESCO has asked countries to differ- entiate their data into 1 8 academic programs. The increased categorical differentiation resulted from a variety of factors associated with the expansion of higher education: (1) the creation of new fields of study, such as computer science; (2) the reclassification of some vocational preparatory areas from the secondary level to higher education; and (3) the differentiation of some fields, such as the social sciences, into different fields, such as business and communications.

Measures of overall segregation are sensitive to changes in the number of categories. Therefore, to allow for historical comparisons of the degree of differentiation by sex, I collapsed the data for 1980-90 from 18 fields of study to the original 10. In addition, the fields of social science and law and the fields of arts and humanities were combined for all the years. Both arts and law have a small number of graduates overall. Furthermore, the distinction between social science and law is irrelevant in most cases at the undergraduate level. Arts and humanities are two areas that are often combined in academic clusters in institutions.6

The category "other" was eliminated from the calculation as well because it represents different kinds of programs in different countries. In addition, several countries had no graduates in this category, so including it would have skewed the calculation of the indices. Therefore, seven fields of study are considered in the various tables and figures that follow: agriculture, education, engineering, humanities and arts, medical and health related, natural science and mathematics, and social science and law. Appendix B out- lines how these data were collapsed into the seven fields.

The extent to which women and men are distributed disproportionately throughout fields of study within systems of higher education was measured by both the index of dissimilarity (D) and the index of association (A).7 The index of dissimilarity has been used extensively to examine occupational sex segregation and was used by Jacobs (1989, 1995) to examine sex segregation in higher education in the United States. Values for D represent the percentage of women (or men) who would need to change majors for the distribution throughout programs of study to correspond to the overall proportional representation of men and women graduates in higher education. See note 1 for the calculation of D, keeping in mind that j represents field of study, rather than an occupation, in this application. As was described earlier, D is a measure of overall gender parity, or the

35000

r 30000 ~ Humanities and Arts ;- Social Science and Law

25000 - Medical and Health Related v / * ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Education

W 20000 /

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Engineering 2 20000 - - - Natural Sciences and Math

15000

- O 10000

0

1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 Year

Figure 3. Mean Number of Graduates in All Fields: 1965-90

Note: Data are from various volumes of the UNESCO Statistical Yearbook (1 965-93). Data points represent the number of graduates per field averaged for all countries for which data are available.

6 Bradle

extent to which women and men are distributed proportionally among meaningful social classifications. The referent is an educational distribution that would reflect no gender difference; men and women would be indistin- guishable in terms of educational outcomes by field of study.

Some important limitations are associated with the interpretation of D in historical and comparative research as a result of its statistical properties. Values for D are affected by variation in the size of fields of study. Thus, measures of the degree of programmatic differentiation by sex cannot be disentangled from variability in the relative sizes of fields of study.8 As Figure 3 indicates, the number of graduates in several of these fields fluctuated dramatically from 1965 to 1990. Some of these changes can be attributed to the expansion of higher education described previously.

Beginning in 1970, the number of graduates increased substantially in the social sciences and law, whereas the total number in humanities and arts declined until 1980 and then increased dramatically from 1 985 to 1990. The number of education graduates increased until 1975 and then declined and stabilized. The expansion in education may reflect the reclassification of teacher-training programs in several countries in the 1 970s, rather than solely the greater propensity for persons to pursue educational training at that time. The number of graduates in agriculture, natural sciences and mathematics, and engineering remained relatively stable over time. The increase in graduates from health-related fields beginning in 1 970 may be attributed, in part, to the widespread reclassification of training for technical medical specialties (such as X-ray technician and dental laboratory technician), as well as of nursing to the higher education level from a secondary or inter- stitial level of vocational training.

Since there is considerable variation in the size of fields of study, historically and cross- nationally, a supplementary measure of gender differentiation net of size of the field is needed. The index of association (A), developed by M. Charles (1992) and M. Charles and Grusky (1 995), is a measure of segregation that is independent of variability both in women's overall tertiary participation and in

tertiary programs.9 For each country and time point, A is cal-

culated as follows: A = exp{1 /I x >{ln(Wj/Mj)- [1// x lln (Wj/Mj)]}2}1/2

where J = the number of fields of study, W= the number of women graduating from field j, W= the number of female graduates,

Mj the number of men graduating from field j, and M = the number of male graduates. A gives the factor by which women (or

men) are overrepresented in the average field of study in a given country. Values of A range from 1 (a distribution across fields corre- sponding to the sex distribution among graduates as a whole) to infinity (in a perfectly segregated distribution A is undefined because M. = 0 in all female-dominated fields).

Year-specific means for the two indices for a wide range of countries are presented in Table 1 in five-year intervals from 1965 to 1990. Since D remains widely used in sex segregation research, it is included here for comparison purposes. Because trends in D are confounded with changes in the relative sizes of academic programs, I focus primarily on the historical shifts in the A index.

The overall trend in A is toward a moder- ate decline in gender differentiation by field of study. The biggest drop was from 1970 to 1 975; the decline continued through 1980, hovering at that level through 1990.10 By 1990, women or men were still overrepresented in the average field by nearly a factor of 3 (2.89). Thus, although women's overall representation in higher education increased dramatically during these decades, approaching gender parity, gender differentiation by field of study remained high.

The extent of variation among countries decreased considerably over time, as expressed by the standard deviation of A. For example, in 1965, A ranged from a high of 8.19 in Italy, followed by 7.68 in the United States, to lows of 2.28 in Egypt and Turkey and 1.88 in Bulgaria. By 1990, A ranged from a high of 5.89 in Uganda, followed by 5.05 in


Table 1. Indices of Dissimilarity (D) and Association (A): Year-Specific Means

1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990

D .35 .36 .31 .29 .30 .28 (.08) (.11) (.09) (.11) (.09) (.11)

A 4.10 3.87 3.39 3.07 2.91 2.89 (1.69) (1.68) (1.25) (.87) (.79) (.88)

n= 37 n= 36 n= 32 n = 32 n= 39 n= 51 countries countries countries countries countries countries

Note: Data are from the UNESCO Statistical Yearbook for various years. Calculations are based on seven fields of study. The figures in parentheses are standard deviations.

Japan, to a low of 1.65 in Algeria and 1.71 in Syria.1 1 Italy remained at the upper end of the distribution of gender differentiation throughout the period under study, and several Eastern European and Middle Eastern countries remained near the bottom. Overall, these measures suggest that gender parity in access to higher education has continued to coexist with gender differentiation in the pattern of participation in higher education, although the degree of gender differentiation abated somewhat over time.

The segregation indices provide useful information about the extent to which women and men are distributed disproportionately across fields of study, but they do not indicate in which fields women or men are underrepresented or overrepresented, net of changes in overall graduation rates. To answer that question, one needs to look more specifically at the distribution of graduates in programs.

DISTRIBUTION OF MEN AND WOMEN IN FIELDS OF STUDY

The field-specific components of A can be used to ascertain the extent to which women are under- or overrepresented in particular fields of study relative to the gender composition of the average field of study. These field-specific terms (A1) are calculated as follows:

Ai = {ln(Wj/Mj)-[1 /J x YIn ( Wj/Mj)]}, with W, M, and I defined as previously. Values above 0 indicate fields in which women are overrepresented, and values below 0 represent fields in which women are underrepresented. The exponents of these figures give the factor by which women are over- or underrepresented in the respective field. These values are not affected by changes in the participation rates of women over time or by changes in the relative sizes in the various fields of study. Therefore, one is better able to ascertain in which fields of study women's representation has increased, net of changes in the overall enrollment rates.

Figure 4 presents trends in the field-specific components of A. It reveals that women have been consistently and dramatically underrepresented in agriculture and engineering and overrepresented in education, social science and law, the humanities and arts, and health-related fields. Few men have entered education over time. As Figure 3 indicates, social science and law and health-related fields considerably expanded in size. Some portion of the increased female representation in the health-related fields may be attributed to the reclassification of nursing as "higher education" during the 1 970s in several countries. Better data than are presently available cross-nationally are needed to deter- mine the extent to which this "massification" effect explains increased female representation in health-related fields and to what

8 Bradley

2.5

2

1.5

Humanities and

- 5Social Science 0.5 and~~~~ Law

va 0 | - _ _ _ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Medical and Health Related

a *---Education 0) 5 Engineering

1 _ -- Natural Sciences

> -1.5 _ and Math -2 -L _____________-4__ - -Agriculture

-25

1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990

Year

Figure 4. Women's Relative Representation in Specific Fields of Study: 1965-90

Note: Data are from various volumes of the UNESCO Statistical Yearbook (1965-93). Women's under- or overrepresentation per field of study is relative to women's representation in the average field of study, represented by 0 on the graph.

extent growth in female representation sig- nals a more even distribution of women and men across all subfields in this area.

By disaggregating the data from 1975 through 1990 to the 18-category ISCED system, I found more detailed information available for some of the subfields included in social science and law. These data (not presented here) revealed that during this period, women were consistently overrepresented in home economics and communications, underrepresented in law, and shifted from underrepresentation in business and social sciences to overrepresentation. Business management studies expanded in sync with the increased bureaucratization and industrialization of society as occupational opportunities for managers in the private and public sectors expanded. As the field expanded, women's representation in business management shifted from significantly lower than men's in 1965 to overrepresentation in 1990. The growth in women's representation in this expanding field is a contributing factor to the decline in overall sex differentiation by field, as measured by A.

Comparisons Among Countries It is interesting to note that despite international and national attempts to increase the

participation of women in science and mathematics programs, women's representation in these areas appears to have decreased over time relative to their participation in the average program. A closer look at the scores of individual countries by year reveals some variation and a few surprises. Scandinavian countries, often characterized by both popular attitudes and public policy as promoting gender parity, rank surprisingly high in terms of the overrepresentation of men in mathematics and science. In 1990, men were overrepresented by a factor of 5.4 in Finland, 4.4 in Denmark, 4.1 in Sweden, and 3.1 in Norway. In comparison, men were overrepresented by a factor of 3.0 in Japan, a country characterized along a number of dimensions as having more gender-differentiated spheres and whose popular attitudes are less supportive of gender parity than in Scandinavia (Brinton 1 988; Hakim 1996). These relative rankings of countries are remarkably similar to those found by M. Charles (1 992) for occupational sex segregation.

Sweden's low representation of women in traditionally male-dominated fields is surprising within its social context. Beginning in 1968, the Swedish government undertook a series of reforms that were aimed at increasing equality in access to education by class and gender, to encourage gender atypical


educational and occupational choices, and to link education and occupational outcomes more closely (Erikson and Jonsson 1 996). These initiatives were coupled with structural changes: Colleges of teaching and nursing were redefined as higher education, resulting in an influx of female students to higher education in 1 977 (Elgqvist-Saltzman 1 988). Despite these efforts, the degree of gender differentiation in higher education remained high. In 1970, when the reforms were being initiated, Sweden's gender differentiation score of 3.40 exceeded the cross-national average of 3.87, as measured by A. In 1980 and 1 990, Sweden's degree of gender differentiation continued to exceed the cross- national average (A = 3.97 in 1 980 versus the cross-national average of 3.07; A = 3.63 in 1 990, compared to the cross-national average of 2.89). Similarly, comparative research has revealed the persistence of relatively high levels of occupational gender differentiation in Sweden over time (M. Charles 1992; Jacobs and Lim 1995).

When the countries are sorted by level of economic development, measured by their logged gross national products for 1965-90 in five-year intervals (World Bank 1991), countries in the lower two-thirds of the distri-

bution exhibited lower levels of sex segregation by field of study than did the more industrialized and wealthier countries.12 Higher education systems in less economically developed countries enroll a much smaller proportion of the population than do those of more industrialized countries. The students, who constitute an elite within their home countries, are more likely to come from urban areas and upper-class families than from rural areas or the lower classes. Thus, women in these countries may make different choices than do average women in countries with more mass systems of higher education.

Figures 5 and 6 plot the degree to which women were over- or underrepresented in fields of study in more- and less economically developed countries, respectively, between 1 965 and 1 990. The patterns are not dramatically different from each other with two notable exceptions. Although women were significantly underrepresented in engineering in both sets of countries, there was a higher proportion of women in engineering in the less economically developed countries than in the more economically developed ones. Some of the countries with relatively higher representation of women in science and engineering were also characterized by a high

3

2

0~~~~~~

Humanities and Arts X -U- _ __ _ __*Social Sciences and Law

Medical and Health Related -*--Education

------- Engineering -2 Natural Sciences and Math

--------- ---------- * Agriculture

-3

1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 Year

Figure 5. Females' Relative Representation in More Economically Developed Countries: 1965-90

Note: Data are from various volumes of the UNESCO Statistical Yearbook (1 965-93). Women's under- or overrepresentation per field of study is relative to women's representation in the average field of study, represented by 0 on the graph.

10 Bradley

3

2

I Ar

Social Sciences and Law

Medical and Health Related Education

X -------------------- - - --- -Engineering

-2 - - - -Natural Sciences and Math -2 Agriculture

-3 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990

Year

Figure 6. Females' Relative Representation in Less Economically Developed Countries: 1965-93

Note: Data are from various volumes of the UNESCO Statistical Yearbook (1 965-93). Women's under- or overrepresentation per field of study is relative to women's representation in the average field of study, represented by 0 on the graph.

degree of gender differentiation in other spheres of life. For example, in 1 990, Algeria was ranked 43rd (out of 51 countries) in the underrepresentation of women in science and mathematics and 47th in engineering. In addition, in 1995, 82 percent of the foreign students from Algeria who were studying in the United States were men (Institute of International Education 1 995). The vast majority of students from less economically developed countries who study in the United States (the country with the greatest number of foreign students worldwide) are in engineering and mathematics-science programs. Thus, the proportion of women in these areas in less economically developed countries may be artificially inflated because of the relatively high number of men who study abroad.

In the period under study, women were overrepresented in health-related fields to a greater extent in more economically developed countries, on average, than in less economically developed countries. Because of the definitional issues surrounding the mix of sex-segregated areas that are aggregated to combine into the health-related category, it is difficult to interpret this difference.

CONCLUSION

Higher education, at the nexus of status-com- petition and status-equality efforts, provides a lens for examining attempts to transform gender relations in society. The tables and figures presented here indicate that although gender inequality in educational access decreased dramatically from 1965 to 1990, gender differentiation in the nature of men's and women's participation declined little. The degree of gender differentiation varied among countries, but the pattern was remarkably similar. This finding echoes that of studies that have attested to the persistence of occupational sex segregation, despite increases in women's overall participation in the labor force (M. Charles and Grusky 1995; Jacobs and Lim 1995; Semyonov and Jones 1 999). It is perhaps surprising, given modernization theorists' predictions that ascriptive criteria would decline in significance as countries industrialized (Bell 1 976; Treiman 1 970).

The similarity between the gender differentiation patterns found in the labor market and in education suggests an interplay between notions of universalism and particularism that


has framed the educational choices of individ- uals in a gender-differentiated manner. The right to choose one's future freely, put forth in global programs to elevate women's status in society, is made manifest within national con- texts that build on local meaning. In various international conventions on human rights, in general, and women's status, in particular, nation-states are directed to widen access to public institutions to maximize the life chances of all citizens. Hence, they should remove discriminatory barriers to individual choice and institute compensatory reforms when such obstacles have been identified.

The Swedish case exemplifies the limits of assuming that structural change alone can alter gender differentiation in education and the labor market. Despite concerted efforts to remake educational structures to minimize gender differences in access, participation, and outcomes, gender differentiation by field persisted. Indeed, the extensive structural changes associated with the expansion of higher education that were intended to widen access may have contributed inadver- tently to gender disproportionality as female- dominated fields, such as teaching and nursing, were grafted onto higher education systems with no expectation or efforts to change their gender composition.1 3

Rational choice models typically suggest that women and men share the same utility function, that is, that men and women make present choices in the hopes of realizing the same future benefits. Marini et al.'s research (1 996) on occupational preferences and attitudes confirmed that a similar proportion of young women and young men, at least in the United States, desire economic benefits from future work commitments. Their research and that of several others have also suggested that women disproportionately prefer jobs that provide them with intrinsic benefits, such as social rewards, and flexibility to tend to family concerns (Elgqvist-Saltzman 1988; Hakim 1 996)-findings that challenge the assumptions of the rational model of educational and occupational choice. Thus, women's (and men's) preferences appear to be more multidimensional than the economic-utility model presumes. Women and men may factor in the same elements (economic

rewards, intrinsic benefits, and time and ener- gy for household duties) but assign them different priorities. These priorities may vary by class as well as gender (Arnot 1992; Biraimah 1991).

Educational choices are made within a given set of structured alternatives that lead to future trajectories that enable or restrict future choices (Abbott 1 997). Unlike the extensive body of cross-national research on educational structure and socioeconomic class, the relationship between educational structure and gender-differentiated outcomes has received little cross-national, empirical attention. Several country-level case studies have shown that when students are free to choose their programs of study, sex segregation tends to increase (Catsambis 1 994; Kontogiannopolou-Polydorides 1 991; Plateau 1991; Stolte-Heiskanen 1991). In particular, despite their academic qualifications and per- formance, girls and women disproportionately do not continue to study mathematics and science, and even lower proportions of women study engineering. Thus, educational systems that maximize individual freedom of choice by eliminating mandatory requirements may be more likely to have greater gender disproportionality than systems that minimize choice and mandate universal requirements (see Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, 1 986).

This relationship is most likely to be condi- tioned, however, by the degree of gender egalitarianism that is prevalent in society. For instance, M. Charles (1 992) found evidence that gender-egalitarian ideology, observed through increased legal rights accorded to women, was positively associated with female representation in male-dominated occupations. This finding suggests that a country that is characterized by a strong gender-egalitarian ideology may also have greater proportions of women in male-dominated fields of study, regardless of the educational structure. Research is less clear on what may pre- cipitate men's movement into women's fields, other than the expectation of the positive effect of higher pay for affiliated occupations, again presuming the unidimensional rational /man./

12 Bradle

Concern about the low proportion of women in male-dominated fields of study linked to high-status occupational outcomes has led to local and global programs to increase the enrollment of women in science, engineering, and mathematics-an approach that has been labeled the "female deficit model" (Foster 1992). The data presented here indicate that these programs have had limited success. An extensive body of research has demonstrated that sex segregation also exists in science subfields, since men are overrepresented in physical, mathematical, and computer science and women are overrepresented in the biological sciences at both the academic and occupational levels (Stolte- Heiskanen 1991).

Comparisons of more- and less economically developed countries also remind sociol- ogists and policy analysts to avoid considering fields of study within a vacuum. The tight coupling of human capital assumptions and education-as-training has been tempered by context-specific ideas of gender roles. Boserup's (1 970) work revealed that Western modernization projects had negative effects on women's status in less economically developed countries because they provide only men with the technological tools that have been determined to be necessary for economic progress, as a result of Western assumptions about the roles of women and men in society. In a recent incarnation of this phenomenon, the celebration of technology as the key to modernization has led governments in less economically developed countries to send men to better-equipped universities in the industrialized West to study the natural sciences, mathematics, engineering, and computer science. The men's absence may have created opportunities for women to study engineering in their home countries, but the status of these degrees is likely to be lower than those obtained by men abroad.

Women's representation in the previously male-dominated field of business has increased significantly over time, along with women's occupational representation in managerial professions in many countries. The goal of gender parity in public-sphere activities, articulated by feminists and repre- sentatives of international organizations alike,

thus renders the field of business more "suc- cessful" than that of engineering. This fram- ing of women's status has begged the discussion of whether and where gender difference may prevail without provoking concern. Is the utopian vision, monitored closely by movements in overall segregation indices, gender proportionality across a/ fields?

In a variety of different scenarios amid different educational structures, one sees that cultural ideas on gender relations and the roles of women and men in society influence the formation of educational options and choices. Efforts to raise the status of women have focused on gender parity in access and only recently have begun to address issues related to choice. Women, on average, choose from a narrower band of options, and these choices often translate into jobs with lower wages and occupational prestige. Thus, gender (as a historically specific cultural construction) operates on the chooser, the choice, and the implications of choice. It is the embedded nature of these choices in cul- turally proscribed future consequences that transforms gender difference into gender inequality. The data presented here suggest that further research is warranted to explore the interrelationship of aspects of women's and men's status, when viewed as embedded within a gender-differentiated system of social stratification (Bradley and Khor 1993; Young, Fort, and Danner 1994).

NOTES

1. D = Y1( wiIW-(ML! 100 2

where Wj is the number of women in occupation j W is the total number of women in the labor force, Mj is the number of men graduating in occupation j and M is the total number of men in the labor force. 2. Occupational segregation by sex has

been shown to have material consequences


for women's (and men's) lives. Researchers have found that the distribution of women and men in different occupations accounts for some of the gender gap in wages, since occupations that are filled predominantly by men are associated with higher rates of pay than are those filled by women (estimates of the proportion of the gender wage gap that can be attributed to segregation vary, see the discussion in Jacobs and Lim 1 995).

3. See the following studies on women in various countries and regions: Lapidus (1 982), on the former Soviet Union; Byrne (1 978) and Jones and Castle (1 986), on Great Britain; Guppy, Balson, and Vellutini (1987), on Canada; Elgqvist-Saltzman (1 988), on Sweden; Fujimura-Fanselow (1985), on Japan; Eliou (1 988), on Greece; Jacobs (1 989, 1 995), on the United States; El-Sanabary (1 989), on the Middle East and North Africa; F. Charles (1991), on France; Fjelde (1991), on Norway; Foster (1 992), on Australia; and Kalmijin and van der Lippe (1997), on the Netherlands. See also Bourque and Conway (1993); Kelly and Slaughter (1991); Lie, Malik, and Harris (1994); Stolte-Heiskanen (1 991 ); and Wilson (1 991).

4. See Scott (1988) on the tension between equality and difference in feminist discourse on gender relations.

5. The country scores for the index of dissimilarity and the index of association for each country are available from the author.

6. Similar results for all figures and tables were obtained when nine fields of study were used. The seven-category results are presented for ease of visual comparison.

7. See M. Charles and Grusky (1 995), Jacobs (1 989, 1 995), and Massey and Denton (1 988) for discussions of the relative merits of various segregation indices.

8. Size-standardized D (Ds) is not affected by variation in the size of the major categories, but is affected by changes in the overall participation rate of women in higher education (see M. Charles and Grusky 1 995). Since Figure 1 indicates that women's representation in higher education increased dramatically over time, this shortcoming of Ds suggests that it is inappropriate for this pur- pose.

9. For example, some countries may restrict the enrollment of students in particular fields, a process referred to as numerus clausus, while other countries may redirect funds to expand the enrollment of a field. A country's strategies may vacillate considerably over time in response to perceived national priorities. The expansion and con- traction of a field may also be driven by sup- ply factors, since students' demand for credentials in a particular field may shift with perceptions of employment opportunities. The information used to calculate D does not allow researchers or policy analysts to disen- tangle these influences on the aggregate picture of gender differentiation by field of study.

10. A similar pattern was found when a constant set of 1 9 countries was examined over time.

1 1. Japan was relatively high in A in 1965 as well, with a score of 6.39.

1 2. These data, not presented here, are available from the author.

1 3. See Elgqvist-Saltzman (1 988) and Windolf (1 997) for discussions of the positive effect of the upgrading of teacher training to the level of higher education on women's representation in higher education in Sweden and Germany, respectively.

14 Bradley

APPENDIX A

UNESCO International Standard Classification of Education by Field of Study:

10-Category Classification System

ISCED Category Subfields

Agriculture Fisheries, forestry, horticulture, rural science, vet- erinary medicine and similar subjects

Education Education, pedagogy (including subjects studied in teacher-training institutions at the third level), physical education

Engineering Applied science, construction, geodesy, metallur- gy, mining, surveying, technology, textiles, and similar subjects

Fine Arts Architecture, drawing, music, painting, sculpture, speech and dramatic arts, and similar subjects

Humanities Archaeology, history, languages, letters, library science, philosophy, theology, and similar subjects

Law Law

Medical Sciences Anatomy, dentistry, medicine, midwifery, nursing, optometry, osteopathy, pharmacy, physiotherapy, public health, and similar subjects

Natural Sciences Astronomy, bacteriology, biochemistry, biology, botany, chemistry, entomology, geology, geo- physics, mathematics, meteorology, physics, zool- ogy, and similar subjects

Social Sciences Banking, commerce, diplomacy, economics, eth- nology, geography, home economics, international relations, journalism, political science, public administration, social welfare, sociology, statistics, and similar subjects

Other All subjects not covered in the other categories


APPENDIX B

Aggregating Categories from the 18-Category Classification to the 10- Category Classification

1 8-Category Classification 1 0-Category Classification

Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishery Agriculture

Education Science and Training Education

Engineering, Trade, Craft, and Industrial Engineering Programs

Fine and Applied Arts, Architecture Fine Arts

Humanities, Religion, and Theology Humanities

Law Law

Medical Science and Health-Related Medical Sciences

Natural Science, Mathematics, and Natural Science Computer Science

Social and Behavioral Science, Social and Behavioral Mass Communication and Science Documentation, Commercial and Business, Home Economics

Other, Service Trades, Transportation, Other and Communications

16 Bradle

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Karen Bradley, Ph.D., is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Western Washington University, Bellingham. Her main fields of interest are gender, sociology of education, and social stratification. She is currently researching the distribution of women and men in higher education, by field of study and institutional sector in OECD countries, and is evaluating the relationship between this distribution and occupational outcomes (with Maria Charles).

This research was assisted by a grant from the Bureau of Faculty Research at Western Washington University and Grant No. 980971 1 from the National Science Foundation. An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, August 1996, in New York. The research was conducted, in part, while the author was a visiting scholar at

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the Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland. The article benefited from the comments of Maria Charles. Wade Cole, Jessica Delgado, and Melanie Hulbert provided research assistance. Direct all correspondence to Dr. Karen Bradley, Department of Sociology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225-9081; E-mail: bradley@ cc.wwu.edu.

the incorporation of women into higher education: paradoxical outcomes?

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