The Incorporation of Women into Higher Education: Paradoxical Outcomes?

Unlike the extensive cross-national research on occupational sex segregation, sex segregation within higher education has yet to be empirically examined comparatively. This article reports analyses for a wide range of countries from 1965 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