Women’s outcomes in education and employment: strong gains, but more to do

by Éric Charbonnier and Corinne Heckmann
Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education

There’s no denying it: when it comes to education and employment, women are on a roll, all over the world.  As described in the latest issue of the OECD’s new brief series Education Indicators in Focus, the achievement gap between boys and girls has narrowed so much at lower levels of education that the focus of concern is now on the underachievement of boys.  On the 2009 PISA reading assessment, for example, 15-year-old girls outperformed boys in every OECD country, on average by 39 points – the equivalent of one year of school.

Young women are also making strong progress in higher education in OECD countries.  In 2000, 51% percent of women could be expected to enter a university-level programme at some point in their lives; today, the number is 66%.  In fact, the proportion of women who hold a university-level qualification now equals or exceeds that of men in 29 of the 32 OECD countries for which data are comparable. This figure is below 50% only in China, Japan, Korea and Turkey.

At the same time, still more can be done to improve outcomes for girls and young women in the classroom.  In mathematics, for example, 15-year-old boys tend to perform slightly better than girls in most countries, while science performance is more variable.  And in higher education, women remain under-represented at the most advanced levels.  Across all OECD countries, less than half of advanced research qualifications such as doctorates were awarded to women in 2009.  In Japan and Korea, the figure is only around 30%.  This pattern holds in all countries except Brazil, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal and the United States.

In addition, some fields of study are still branded as “masculine” or “feminine”. In 2009, more than 70% of higher education students in the field of education were women, and an average of 75% of the degrees in the fields of health and welfare also went to women. By contrast, in most countries, fewer than 30% of all graduates in the fields of engineering, manufacturing and construction were women.

Nonetheless, women’s strides in education have led to improved labour market outcomes for women overall. For instance, the gender gap in employment narrowed from 25 percentage points in 2000 to 21 percentage points in 2009 among those without an upper secondary qualification, and from 19 percentage points in 2000 to 15 percentage points in 2009 among those with an upper secondary qualification. And it’s narrower still among those with a higher education qualification, shrinking from 11 percentage points in 2000 to 9 percentage points in 2009.

Increasingly, OECD countries are doing more to address gender gaps – both in education and employment.  For example, in the Czech Republic, Germany and the Slovak Republic, the proportion of women graduating with science degrees grew by more than 10 percentage points between 2000 and 2009.  As a result, these countries are now closer to the OECD average of 40% -- a figure that has remained stable over the past decade. In 2000, the European Union announced a goal to increase the number of university graduates in mathematics, science and technology by at least 15% by 2010, and to reduce the gender imbalance in these subjects. So far, however, progress toward this goal has been marginal.

On the employment side, the Nordic countries, Germany and Portugal have instituted policies allowing fathers to receive parental leave and income support so their spouses can remain in the workforce.  In Iceland, Norway and Spain, some firms are required to have at least 40% of their boardroom seats assigned to women. Meanwhile, other companies, such as Deutsche Telekom, have introduced voluntary quotas for women in management and family-friendly practices such as flex-times and tele-working.

The bottom line is clear: while girls and women have made strong gains, it’s time to finish the job.  To promote gender equality even further, policymakers should be encouraged to pursue policies to increase mathematics and science performance among girls – as well as reading achievement among boys.  Meanwhile, initiatives to break down gender stereotypes in fields of study and progressive corporate policies can do more to increase women’s employment opportunities.

For more information
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus
OECD Gender Initiative
www.oecd.org/gender/equality
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators
www.oecd.org/edu/eag2011
On the OECD’s Indicators of Education Systems (INES) programme, visit:
INES Programme overview brochure
Chart source: OECD Education Database

Teachers Summit highlights need for collective leadership

by Kristen Weatherby
Senior Analyst, Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)

Yesterday was the first day of the International Summit on the Teaching Profession in New York City, co-hosted by the US Department of Education, Education International and the OECD. I was lucky enough to be an attendee, along with government and union representatives, teachers and school leaders from 24 countries around the world.

The theme of this year’s summit is Preparing Teachers and Developing School Leaders. All presentations and discussions at the summit are designed to give countries examples of high-performing systems that are successful in:
1. Placing high-quality teachers in the areas where there is the most need;
2. Preparing teachers to equip students with 21st century skills; and
3. Growing school leaders at scale.

Andreas Schleicher (who will be blogging later about the conclusions of the Summit) gave the first presentation of the summit using data from various OECD studies to frame the topics above, and then the first session started.  During the discussion, which was on school leadership, a teacher from one of the participating countries stood up to comment. She had won many national and local awards in her country, and as such had been invited by her country’s government to attend the Summit both last year and this year. However, the school leader at her school would not give her permission to attend. Last year, she just stayed home from the Summit and taught. This year, she used her personal holiday time and came to New York City. She just wanted to tell attendees how meaningful it was to know that these discussions about and for teachers were happening, and that government and union leaders at the highest levels were concerned and actively working toward things like developing better systems of collaborative leadership at schools.

As a former teacher myself, this was also what struck me about the Summit after the first day: every country in that room is committed to improve the quality of teaching, learning and leadership in their schools. It also became clear that the international sharing of practice that happens at gatherings such as this one does make a difference when delegates return home. Country representatives gave examples of learnings they had taken both from last year’s Summit and from visits to schools in other countries. They asked questions of each other to learn more about what made success possible.

Today’s sessions will be about teachers, and there will be time for country groups to reflect and plan together. We will be live tweeting on @OECDLive and will be streaming the closing session live.

Links:
International Summit on the Teaching Profession
Background report: Preparing Teachers and Developing School Leaders for the 21st Century: Lessons from around the world
OECD publications on teachers
Follow the summit on twitter @OECDLive #ISTP2012
Follow TALIS and Kristen Weatherby @Kristen_Talis
Photo credit: © casejustin / Shutterstock

A View from the Teachers’ Summit

By John Bangs

Special consultant on OECD issues for Education International, the global body for all teachers’ organisations

I have two hopes for this summit: The fact that the number of countries and unions participating in the summit this year is up by a third compared with last year reflects the increasing understanding that it is teacher policies that matter. Their ability, their confidence and their self-efficacy are crucial. I hope that the kind of dead-end discussion about how choice and the market yield better performance begins to fade away.

My second hope is that the Dutch government continues this summit in 2013 as it has offered to do, and that we continue to build greater dialogue into the summit. South Africa is attending as an observer country this year. This is absolutely the right thing to do: to invite countries that are determined to improve their education systems to enter the dialogue with those whose education systems have improved, to encourage a dialogue between developed and developing countries. There is the dawning realisation that you cannot improve without dialogue; you have to be constantly learning.

Look at the controversy about teacher evaluations. We discussed this issue during last year’s summit. If you learn from places like Finland, Singapore and Hong Kong, you see that enhancing teachers’ self-efficacy and capacity is the way to go. That is done among colleagues and peers. The issue of pay and punishment are not central to driving performance; and publicising the results of individual teacher evaluations is insane. There is a better model—which is about development, not punishment.

Unions are essential participants at the summit. Strong teachers’ unions are an engine, not a hindrance, to reform. The success of the last year’s summit has really put the critics who say that teachers’ unions are inevitably the obstacles to reform on the back foot. They’re still there, they’re still wrong, and they’re on the defensive. This kind of summit brings the words ‘social partnership’ centre stage. The breadth of knowledge that unions can contribute to the dialogue has been highly underestimated by governments. Through Education International, for example, unions have been engaged in deep and fundamental exchanges of information about education systems. Governments often have short institutional memories about what works in education reform; unions have enormous resources and have long institutional memories. Unions can give governments the knowledge capital to work with.

I’m particularly fascinated by two areas that we’ll be discussing in this year’s summit. One is leadership; and I’m glad the agenda has shifted from focusing only on school principals to the understanding that all teachers can show leadership.  The second is on 21st century skills: What do students and teachers need to know? How do we evaluate them? That, I’m sure, will make for an absolutely fascinating discussion.

Links:

International Summit on the Teaching Profession

Education International

OECD Pointer for Policy Makers on Improving School Leadership: Policy and Practice

OECD publications on teachers
Follow the summit on twitter #ISTP2012

 Photo credit: © Monkey Business Images / Shutterstock