2020 Volume 71 Issue 3 Pages 377-393
This study aims to describe the long-term gender gap trends in educational attainment in Japan. Educational expansion in the latter half of the 20th century has occurred unevenly among men and women. While there have been 4-year colleges or universities for men, there have been just 2-year junior colleges for women. It is following the 1980s cohort that womenʼs enrollment rate in 4-year colleges or universities rapidly increased to replace their enrolments in junior colleges. Previous studies have predicted the disappearance of the gender gap in postsecondary education. In this study, the question of gender gap is considered by itself again. We examine whether gender gap in educational attainment decreases in the postwar generation. We further examine whether gender gap remains in generations where gender-segregated educational systems converge into the single-tracked school system.
An empirical analysis shows that gender gap in all educational institutions decreases with the passing generations. The gender gap in high school entrance has reversed from male favoring to female favoring, and the gap has approximately equalized in postsecondary education. In colleges or universities, even after controlling the effect of family background and academic achievement in junior high school, the positive effect largely remained with males among the youngest cohort. This result suggests that the hidden gender tracks in Japanese educational choices or different returns in education still seem to exist. An additional analysis shows that these levels in the gender gap are affected by the family background. Trends in the decline of male favorability in education are not affected by their family background. Based on these findings regarding the persistent family background effects and the declining gender gaps, it is expected that family background, which plays a relatively more important role in educational inequality, affects the educational attainment of men and women in a similar way.
