IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/auu/dpaper/610.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The University Gender Gap in Australia: A Long-run Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Alison L. Booth
  • Hiau Joo Kee

Abstract

According to the 1911 Census, the proportion female of those receiving university education was around 22%, growing to 29% in 1921. By 1952 it had dropped to under 20%, due to easy access into universities for returning war-veterans. From the early 1950s, the university-educated gender gap began to reduce in response to women’s changing expectations of labour-force participation, fertility and age at first marriage. By 1987, Australian women were more likely than men to be enrolled at university. However, these aggregate figures disguise considerable heterogeneity across fields of study.

Suggested Citation

  • Alison L. Booth & Hiau Joo Kee, 2009. "The University Gender Gap in Australia: A Long-run Perspective," CEPR Discussion Papers 610, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    • Handle: RePEc:auu:dpaper:610
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/CEPR/DP610.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Coles, Melvyn & Francesconi, Marco, 2007. "On the Emergence of Toyboys: Equilibrium Matching with Ageing and Uncertain Careers," IZA Discussion Papers 2612, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz & Ilyana Kuziemko, 2006. "The Homecoming of American College Women: The Reversal of the College Gender Gap," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(4), pages 133-156, Fall.
    3. Mitch, David, 1984. "Underinvestment in Literacy? The Potential Contribution of Government Involvement in Elementary Education to Economic Growth in Nineteenth-Century England," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(2), pages 557-566, June.
    4. Christopher Dougherty, 2005. "Why Are the Returns to Schooling Higher for Women than for Men?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 40(4), pages 969-988.
    5. M.W. Butlin, 1977. "A Preliminary Annual Database 1900/01 to 1973/74," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp7701, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    6. Hiau Joo Kee, 2006. "Glass Ceiling or Sticky Floor? Exploring the Australian Gender Pay Gap," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 82(259), pages 408-427, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alison L. Booth & Hiau Joo Kee, 2011. "A Long‐Run View Of The University Gender Gap In Australia," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 51(3), pages 254-276, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alison L. Booth & Hiau Joo Kee, 2011. "A Long‐Run View Of The University Gender Gap In Australia," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 51(3), pages 254-276, November.
    2. Pekkarinen, Tuomas, 2012. "Gender Differences in Education," IZA Discussion Papers 6390, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Booth, Alison L., 2009. "Gender and competition," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 599-606, December.
    4. Hanzhe Zhang, 2021. "An Investment-and-Marriage Model with Differential Fecundity: On the College Gender Gap," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(5), pages 1464-1486.
    5. repec:ris:msuecw:2019_011 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Stimpfle, Alexander & Stadelmann, David, 2016. "Marriage Age Affects Educational Gender Inequality: International Evidence," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145492, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. Martín A Rossi & Christian A Ruzzier, 2018. "Career Choices and the Evolution of the College Gender Gap," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 32(2), pages 307-333.
    8. Lei, Ziteng & Lundberg, Shelly, 2020. "Vulnerable Boys: Short-term and Long-term Gender Differences in the Impacts of Adolescent Disadvantage," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 424-448.
    9. Reijnders, L.S.M., 2014. "The college gender gap reversal," Research Report 14006-EEF, University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management).
    10. repec:dgr:rugsom:14006-eef is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Pierre-André Chiappori & Murat Iyigun & Yoram Weiss, 2009. "Investment in Schooling and the Marriage Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 1689-1713, December.
    12. Adele H. Marshall & Mariangela Zenga & Aglaia Kalamatianou, 2020. "Academic Students’ Progress Indicators and Gender Gaps Based on Survival Analysis and Data Mining Frameworks," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 151(3), pages 1097-1128, October.
    13. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2017. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(3), pages 789-865, September.
    14. Cid, Alejandro & Bernatzky, Marianne, 2014. "Brecha de género en la educación secundaria [Gender gap in middle education]," MPRA Paper 59959, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Shelly Lundberg, 2020. "Educational gender gaps," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 87(2), pages 416-439, October.
    16. Raphaela Hyee, 2011. "Education in a Marriage Market Model without Commitment," Working Papers 683, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    17. Hanson, Andrew, 2017. "Do college admissions counselors discriminate? Evidence from a correspondence-based field experiment," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 86-96.
    18. Chuan, Amanda & Zhang, Weilong, 2023. "Non-college Occupations, Workplace Routinization, and the Gender Gap in College Enrollment," IZA Discussion Papers 16089, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Laurie S. M. Reijnders, 2018. "Wealth, Wages, and Wedlock: Explaining the College Gender Gap Reversal," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 120(2), pages 537-562, April.
    20. Ulf Nielsson & Herdis Steingrimsdottir, 2018. "The signalling value of education across genders," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(4), pages 1827-1854, June.
    21. Justman, Moshe & Méndez, Susan J., 2018. "Gendered choices of STEM subjects for matriculation are not driven by prior differences in mathematical achievement," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 282-297.
    22. Chuan, A. & Zhang, W., 2021. "Non-College Occupations, Workplace Routinization, and the Gender Gap in College Enrollment," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2177, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    higher education; gender; Australia;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • N3 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:auu:dpaper:610. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cpanuau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.