IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eis/articl/204leslie.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does UK Higher Education Discriminate Against Women?

Author

Listed:
  • D Leslie

Abstract

Using a sample of 2.3 million observations on applicants to UK Higher Education institutions from 1996-2001, the paper explores whether the selection process into Higher Education is discriminatory. The answer is no discrimination, even though women are better qualified and are less likely to be offered a place. The lower tier Higher National Diploma sector is a key issue because women (excluding nursing) are less likely to undertake these courses, which are `male orientated'. The policy conclusion is that to encourage less well-qualified females to undertake Higher Education, more appropriate provision is necessary that recognizes the reality of subject gender segregation.

Suggested Citation

  • D Leslie, 2004. "Does UK Higher Education Discriminate Against Women?," Economic Issues Journal Articles, Economic Issues, vol. 9(2), pages 51-68, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eis:articl:204leslie
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economicissues.org.uk/Files/204Leslie.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. F. L. Jones, 1983. "On Decomposing the Wage Gap: A Critical Comment on Blinder's Method," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 18(1), pages 126-130.
    2. Brown, Charles & Corcoran, Mary, 1997. "Sex-Based Differences in School Content and the Male-Female Wage Gap," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(3), pages 431-465, July.
    3. Arulampalam, Wiji & Naylor, Robin A. & Smith, Jeremy P., 2005. "Effects of in-class variation and student rank on the probability of withdrawal: cross-section and time-series analysis for UK university students," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 251-262, June.
    4. Oaxaca, Ronald, 1973. "Male-Female Wage Differentials in Urban Labor Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 14(3), pages 693-709, October.
    5. Arulampalam, W. & Robin A. Naylor & Jeremy P. Smith, 2002. "University of Warwick," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2002 9, Royal Economic Society.
    6. Dolton, P J & Makepeace, G H, 1986. "Sample Selection and Male-Female Earnings Differentials in the Graduate Labour Market," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 38(2), pages 317-341, July.
    7. Derek Leslie, 2003. "Using success to measure quality in British higher education: which subjects attract the best‐qualified students?," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 166(3), pages 329-347, October.
    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. Derek Leslie, 2005. "Why people from the UK's minority ethnic communities achieve weaker degree results than whites," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(6), pages 619-632.

    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. Ben Jann, 2008. "A Stata implementation of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition," ETH Zurich Sociology Working Papers 5, ETH Zurich, Chair of Sociology, revised 14 May 2008.
    2. C Dougherty, 2003. "Why is the Rate of Return to Schooling Higher For Women Than For Men?," CEP Discussion Papers dp0581, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    3. Nils Braakmann, 2008. "Non scholae, sed vitae discimus! - The importance of fields of study for the gender wage gap among German university graduates during labor market entry and the first years of their careers," Working Paper Series in Economics 85, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
    4. Fortin, Nicole & Lemieux, Thomas & Firpo, Sergio, 2011. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 1, pages 1-102, Elsevier.
    5. 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.
    6. Braakmann Nils, 2010. "Fields of Training, Plant Characteristics and the Gender Wage Gap in Entry Wages Among Skilled Workers – Evidence from German Administrative Data," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 230(1), pages 27-41, February.
    7. Anees, Muhammad & Sajjad, Muhammad & Ahmed, Ishfaq, 2011. "A counterfactual decomposition analysis of immigrants-natives earnings in Malaysia," Economics Discussion Papers 2011-51, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    8. Braakmann Nils, 2013. "What Determines Wage Inequality Among Young German University Graduates?," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 233(2), pages 130-158, April.
    9. Huong Thu Le & Ha Trong Nguyen, 2018. "The evolution of the gender test score gap through seventh grade: new insights from Australia using unconditional quantile regression and decomposition," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-42, December.
    10. Ward-Warmedinger, Melanie E., 1999. "Salary and the Gender Salary Gap in the Academic Profession," IZA Discussion Papers 64, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Sami Napari, 2008. "The Early‐career Gender Wage Gap among University Graduates in the Finnish Private Sector," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 22(4), pages 697-733, December.
    12. Sara de la Rica & Arantza Ugidos, 1995. "¿Son las diferencias en capital humano determinantes en las diferencias salariales observadas entre hombres y mujeres?," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 19(3), pages 395-414, September.
    13. P.W. Miller & S. Rummery, 1989. "Gender Wage Discrimination in Australia: A reassessment," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 89-21, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    14. Marco Biagetti & Sergio Scicchitano, 2016. "Are women in supervisory positions more discriminated against? A multinomial approach," Working Papers 2, Department of the Treasury, Ministry of the Economy and of Finance.
    15. Brown, Charles & Corcoran, Mary, 1997. "Sex-Based Differences in School Content and the Male-Female Wage Gap," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(3), pages 431-465, July.
    16. Dina Shatnawi & Ronald Oaxaca & Michael Ransom, 2014. "Movin’ on up: Hierarchical occupational segmentation and gender wage gaps," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 12(3), pages 315-338, September.
    17. Liu, Hong & Fang, Hai & Zhao, Zhong, 2013. "Urban–rural disparities of child health and nutritional status in China from 1989 to 2006," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 294-309.
    18. Mona Said & Fatma El-Hamidi, 2008. "Taking Technical Education Seriously in MENA: Determinants, Labor Market Implications and Policy Lessons," Working Papers 450, Economic Research Forum, revised 09 Jan 2008.
    19. Sonja C. Kassenboehmer & Mathias G. Sinning, 2014. "Distributional Changes in the Gender Wage Gap," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 67(2), pages 335-361, April.
    20. Zhang, Li & Sharpe, Rhonda Vonshay & Li, Shi & Darity, William A., 2016. "Wage differentials between urban and rural-urban migrant workers in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 222-233.

    More about this item

    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:eis:articl:204leslie. 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: Dan Wheatley (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bsntuuk.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.