Women's Participation in the Greek Educational System

Abstract

This is by and large a descriptive study, examining participation at all educational levels and achievement patterns with emphasis in upper-secondary education at the crucial point of transfer to higher education. It is based on two sources of data: (i) census data of the National Statistical Service of Greece; and (ii) data collected for a study regarding the evaluation of the selection system for higher education. The latter, derived from a questionnaire distributed to a 10% random sample of secondary education graduates/applicants to higher education, is employed for a more refined analysis on specific issues. To introduce the reader to the educational status of women in Greece I present three tables which summarise illiteracy, average years of schooling, and enrolment rates by educational level (Tables I, II and III). Women's participation is summarised in Table IV. The reader should keep in mind that women represent approximately 48% of the population in the agegroups 10 to 34; (this percentage increases gradually to 52% for the age-group 45-64 and to 56% for the age-group over 65 years). The analysis of the data indicates the following points: (1) Girls participate equally with boys in primary education (Table IV) and have the same attendance and pass rates (Table V). But their level of performance differs. So the proportion of girls achieving a 'very good' score (8 or 9 out of 10) is relatively higher than the boys'. The proportion of girls achieving an 'excellent' score (10 out of 10) is increasingly higher than the boys' in grades one to six (Table VI). These data reveal a pattern which has been identified in other parts of the world and has fostered a variety of explanations, the most dominant being that girls comply with required norms and behaviour better than boys do and that adolescent 'problems' which hinder school performance are more prominent in boys than girls. (It should be clear that I do not at the moment propose these explanations for the Greek case.) (2) Women used to have lower participation than men in secondary education until the beginning of the 1970s (Table IV); participation of women and men is equal ever since, with one exception: participation of women in upper secondary education is higher (Table IV) after the 1976-77 reforms. Those reforms introduced: (i) the separation of secondary education into lower and upper; (ii) the establishment of lower secondary as a compulsory educational level; (iii) the formulation of upper secondary as a two-track system, one consisting of general education and the second including technical and vocational training. These changes favoured