A college on every cape: Gender equality, gender segregation and higher educational expansion

The great expansion of higher educational systems in Western countries in the latter half of the 20th century had a profound impact on educational opportunities and is central to understanding the reversal of the gender gap in higher education. In Norway, major educational reforms starting in the late 1960s aimed at making higher education more accessible for large segments of the population, particularly young women who were graduating from high school at an increasing rate. This occurred through the upgrading, establishment, and gradual expansion of local and regional colleges across the country, especially in female-dominated fields associated with work in expanding public welfare sectors. Theories and previous research have suggested that the gendered profile of educational expansions contributed to the cementing of horizontal gender segregation patterns in education and the labor market. We shed light on these processes using new and detailed data on the establishment and upgrading of higher educational institutions between 1969 and 1993. Linking these data to individual-level register data allows us to study how regional variation in educational opportunities affected the educational attainment and field of study choices of young women and men, using a difference-in-differences (DiD)/event study approach. While increased access to college education was a prerequisite for the reversal of the gender gap, our findings suggest that the location of colleges mattered very little. Colleges had, at most, a very modest impact on local educational attainment and gendered field of study choices. We discuss the implications of these findings for policy and sociological theory.