Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2024, 60(6): 551-576 | DOI: 10.13060/csr.2024.008

The Gender-gap Reversal in Tertiary Education and Its Implications for Inequality of Educational Opportunity in European Countries

Tomáš Katrňák ORCID...
Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno

Tertiary education has expanded in European countries since 2000. One consequence of this expansion is the growth of the gender-gap reversal (GGR), in which proportion of women in tertiary education is increasing faster than that of men. This article deals with the historically new gender arrangement of tertiary education. It answers the question of whether GGR, as part of educational expansion, means different gender trends in inequality of educational opportunity (IEO) by educational origin in the tertiary education transition. The author analyzed European Social Survey (ESS) data on the 25–34 age group from 20 European countries over five rounds (2002, 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018). A three-level (random) binary logistic regression model was used to cover individual variables by period by country. The results show that the recent educational expansion has slightly weakened the IEO in tertiary education transition and that it is significantly different for men and women. Gender is important in IEO in a time of GGR. The author discusses what the empirical results mean for the theory of maximally maintained inequality (MMI), which is used in social stratification research as a general explanation for persistent inequality in a time of educational expansion.

Keywords: gender-gap reversal, educational expansion, inequality of educational opportunity, European countries

Received: March 27, 2023; Revised: February 13, 2024; Accepted: February 26, 2024; Prepublished online: June 4, 2024; Published: January 13, 2025  Show citation

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Katrňák, T. (2024). The Gender-gap Reversal in Tertiary Education and Its Implications for Inequality of Educational Opportunity in European Countries. Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review, 60(6), 551-576. doi: 10.13060/csr.2024.008
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