RUI: Gender Equality and Inequality in Higher Education: International Trends and National Nuances

尽管世界各国政府和组织已将高等教育中的性别平等确定为一项重要目标，但尚未在比较的背景下系统地审查普遍存在的教育性别分层模式。这项拟议的研究旨在描述和解释发达工业社会中妇女在高等教育方面的历史和国际差异。将考虑平等的三个不同方面：(1)高等教育中女性的总体比例；(2)高等教育部门(如大学、两年制学院、以职业为导向的培训机构)的性别分布；以及(3)各学习方案的性别分布。第一个目标是描述这三个方面的历史和国家间的可变性。虽然众所周知，近几十年来，全世界妇女的高等教育入学总人数有所增加，但部门和方案性别隔离方面的国际趋势尚未得到严格审查。第二个目标是解释观察到的跨国变异性的模式。将考虑三组解释变量：(1)国家教育系统的结构特征；(2)经济的结构特征；(3)普遍的意识形态氛围，即民族文化中的性别平等主义程度。分析将涵盖1950年至1995年期间的24个先进工业社会。在全面性、详细程度和可比性方面，所使用的综合水平的国际和历史数据优于以往任何其他这类研究中使用的数据。该项目的特点还在于它应用了新的对数线性建模技术，以补充传统的方法学方法和测量模型。这种方法减轻了长期以来阻碍比较分层研究的概念和方法上的困难。

Although gender equality in higher education has been identified as an important goal by governments and organizations throughout the world, prevailing patterns of educational gender stratification have not yet been systematically examined in a comparative context. The proposed research aims to describe and to explain historical and international differences in women's representation in higher education in advanced industrial societies. Three distinct dimensions of equality will be considered: (1) overall female representation in tertiary education; (2) gender distributions across tertiary sectors (e.g., universities, two-year colleges, vocationally-oriented training institutes); and (3) gender distributions across programs of study. The first objective is to describe historical and cross-national variability with respect to these three dimensions. Although it is well known that women's overall tertiary enrollment has increased worldwide in recent decades, international trends in sectoral and programmatic gender segregation have not yet been rigorously examined. The second objective is to account for the observed patterns of cross-national variability. Three sets of explanatory variables will be considered: (1) structural features of the national educational system; (2) structural features of the economy; and (3) the prevailing ideological climate, or degree of gender egalitarianism characterizing the national culture. Analyses will cover 24 advanced industrial societies during the period between 1950 and 1995. The aggregate-level international and historical data employed are superior, in terms of comprehensiveness, level of detail, and comparability, to those used in any other previous research of this type. The project is also distinguished by its application of new log-linear modeling techniques to supplement traditional methodological approaches and measurement models. This approach mitigates conceptual and methodological difficulties that have long hampered comparative stratification research.