Gender Segregation in Vocational Education

Abstract

The gender segregated nature of vocational education and training (VET) has received little attention in the stratification literature, despite the well-known consequences of VET for gender differences in labour market outcomes, such as job placement, income, occupational status and access to full-time employment. This book investigates the institutional contexts of, and individual level mechanisms for, gender segregation in VET from a comparative perspective, through a number of larger cross-national comparisons, as well as more in-depth studies of Canada, Norway, Germany, Australia and Bulgaria. The main motivation for assembling this volume was to gather international comparative research on patterns of gender segregation in vocational education around the world, and to increase our knowledge about this phenomenon in different national contexts. More specifically, we wanted to identify some of the institutional variation that seems to make a difference in terms of the extent to which vocational education is gender segregated. The 10 contributions of this book touch upon questions about occupational expectations, gendered pathways to applied fields of study, educational transitions, feminization of occupations and the relationship between educational choices and opportunity structures. After the introductory chapter, the remaining chapters are divided into three parts. The first contains four chapters based on cross country comparisons. The second contains within-country comparisons – one regional and one over time. The third includes three chapters that focus on theoretical contributions from a life course perspective, within single country settings. The gender segregated nature of vocational education and training (VET) has received little attention in the stratification literature, despite the well-known consequences of VET for gender differences in labour market outcomes, such as job placement, income, occupational status and access to full-time employment. This book investigates the institutional contexts of, and individual level mechanisms for, gender segregation in VET from a comparative perspective, through a number of larger cross-national comparisons, as well as more in-depth studies of Canada, Norway, Germany, Australia and Bulgaria. The main motivation for assembling this volume was to gather international comparative research on patterns of gender segregation in vocational education around the world, and to increase our knowledge about this phenomenon in different national contexts. More specifically, we wanted to identify some of the institutional variation that seems to make a difference in terms of the extent to which vocational education is gender segregated. The 10 contributions of this book touch upon questions about occupational expectations, gendered pathways to applied fields of study, educational transitions, feminization of occupations and the relationship between educational choices and opportunity structures. After the introductory chapter, the remaining chapters are divided into three parts. The first contains four chapters based on cross country comparisons. The second contains within-country comparisons – one regional and one over time. The third includes three chapters that focus on theoretical contributions from a life course perspective, within single country settings.