EduLIFE > School-to-work transition

School-to-work transition

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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:

  1. 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

  2. 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):

  1. Well-known for high gender equality and high female labor market participation

  2. However, quite pronounced females’ disadvantage in terms of wages, prestige, and entrance into high-status occupations

  3. 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

  4. 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

Page last updated on 17 August 2017