Gender and education (and employment): gendered imperatives and their implications for women and men: lessons from research for policy makers

Abstract

After decades of attention to gender matters in the EU, there are important achievements. Across European schools and universities there is much greater awareness of gender equality as an educational issue than there was in the past. Women have greatly increased their levels of attainment in education, surpassing men in their rates of attainment in public examinations in many countries. In addition, women's participation and achievements in traditionally male-defined subjects have been significantly enhanced. However, gender inequalities still remain in European education systems in terms of subject preferences and performance, and in qualitative aspects of the education and training experience. This independent expert report is a review of international research evidence on the relationship between gender and education. It focuses especially on the Lisbon objectives and EU benchmarks. It provides a critical, empirically and theoreticallyinformed analysis of how gendered identities relate to educational processes and outcomes. It summarizes existing research and outlines the policy lessons and measures that are shown to contribute to greater equality between women and men, boys and girls in education.