Old and New Inequalities of Educational Opportunity by Gender and Family Background in Finland

What comes to equality of educational opportunity, in the sociology of education enduring themes have been, for instance, the Bourdieuan thesis of strong reproduction and the persistency of inequality à la Shavit and Blossfeld as comes to relations between parents’ socioeconomic position and their offspring’s educational achievements. Empirical studies from various countries have started to report decline in educational inequality. Our own previous studies based on Finnish longitudinal data have shown that the equality of educational opportunities, as measured by differences in participation in university studies by gender and family background (parents’ education academic vs. non-academic) has clearly improved and differences narrowed up till the end of 20^th century. Gender relations belong to the core interests of sociology of education, too. For long there has been discussion on the persistent gender segregation in higher education, which according to Carlo Barone (2011) is a key in understanding inequality in the labour market.

In this paper we explore equality of educational opportunity and labour market effects related to educational expansion in Finland. Our updated longitudinal register data covers five age groups of higher education students and graduates from baby boomers to recent small age groups, including for the first time also students of the universities of applied sciences. We ask to what extent expanding education improves the odds of participation in university studies when analyzed by gender and family background. We also study how the female/male relation, family background and labour market placements of university graduates in different fields change along with higher education expansion. Shortly, we examine the ways in which changing gender relations in university education manifest on the labour market in the earnings of male and female graduates of various fields and family backgrounds.