The role of vocational education in the transmission of gender segregation from education to employment: Switzerland and Bulgaria compared

Abstract

Previous comparative research has uncovered considerable cross-country differences in occupational gender segregation. There is, however, a lack of research on the role of educational systems in the creation of gender segregation and gendered school-to-work transitions. The aim of this study is to investigate the role of vocational education and the strength of the education–employment linkage in the transmission of horizontal gender segregation from education into the labour market. Transition system literature points to a stronger linkage between education and employment in countries where initial vocational education and training dominates the educational offers, and to a weaker linkage in countries with a stronger focus on general education. Moreover, research on gender segregation in education shows that segregation is especially pronounced in educational systems with a strong vocational education and training sector on the upper secondary level. Based on these insights, we hypothesize that gender segregation in education and its transmission to employment is more pronounced the more distinct a country’s initial vocational education and training system is. To test our assumption, we compare individual school-to-work transitions in Switzerland and Bulgaria, with the vocational principle being more prevalent in the structuring of Swiss educational offers. We use data from the Swiss Youth Panel Survey TREE (N = 3215) and the Bulgarian School Leaver Survey BSLS (N = 885). Following recent developments in multi-group segregation research, entropy-based measurements are calculated to study the school-to-work linkages and the transmission of gender segregation in the two select countries. The empirical results confirm a more pronounced educational gender segregation in Switzerland, which is transferred more strongly into the labour market due to the tighter linkage in that country between education and employment compared to Bulgaria. © 2018, The Author(s).

Keywords

Author Keywords

Vocational education Bulgaria Labour market Gender segregation Switzerland Education–employment linkage

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations

Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet, Trondheim, Trondelag, Norway, Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge, The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria

Institute of Sociology, University of Bern, Bern, BE, Switzerland

Funding & Acknowledgements

Direktion für Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit, SDC

Funding text 1: This contribution was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation within the research project ‘Educational systems and gendered transitions from school into vocational training and work’(SNSF Grant No. 159281).; Funding text 2: TREE was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, BSLS 2014 was supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (Swiss Enlargement Contribution) and by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science in the framework of the Bulgarian-Swiss Research Program. The approval of data collection by ethics committee was not requested for neither survey. PISA participants in Switzerland were guaranteed anonymity. For TREE, they were asked to consent to participate in follow-up surveys and to volunteer a contact address. For reasons of data protection, sensitive personal data (such as information identifying the company providing training, the school attended, or place of residence) has been excluded from the scientific use files to guard against disclosure of individual respondents. Participants in the BSLS 2014 have been guaranteed anonymous treatment of their data. Neither names nor any other personal information has been shown to third persons, institutions, or media by the Bulgarian survey provider.

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, SNF

Grant: 159281

Funding text 1: This contribution was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation within the research project ‘Educational systems and gendered transitions from school into vocational training and work’(SNSF Grant No. 159281).; Funding text 2: TREE was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, BSLS 2014 was supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (Swiss Enlargement Contribution) and by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science in the framework of the Bulgarian-Swiss Research Program. The approval of data collection by ethics committee was not requested for neither survey. PISA participants in Switzerland were guaranteed anonymity. For TREE, they were asked to consent to participate in follow-up surveys and to volunteer a contact address. For reasons of data protection, sensitive personal data (such as information identifying the company providing training, the school attended, or place of residence) has been excluded from the scientific use files to guard against disclosure of individual respondents. Participants in the BSLS 2014 have been guaranteed anonymous treatment of their data. Neither names nor any other personal information has been shown to third persons, institutions, or media by the Bulgarian survey provider.

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, SNF

Funding text 1: This contribution was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation within the research project ‘Educational systems and gendered transitions from school into vocational training and work’(SNSF Grant No. 159281).; Funding text 2: TREE was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, BSLS 2014 was supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (Swiss Enlargement Contribution) and by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science in the framework of the Bulgarian-Swiss Research Program. The approval of data collection by ethics committee was not requested for neither survey. PISA participants in Switzerland were guaranteed anonymity. For TREE, they were asked to consent to participate in follow-up surveys and to volunteer a contact address. For reasons of data protection, sensitive personal data (such as information identifying the company providing training, the school attended, or place of residence) has been excluded from the scientific use files to guard against disclosure of individual respondents. Participants in the BSLS 2014 have been guaranteed anonymous treatment of their data. Neither names nor any other personal information has been shown to third persons, institutions, or media by the Bulgarian survey provider.

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The role of vocational education in the transmission of gender segregation from education to employment: Switzerland and Bulgaria compared

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