Higher education is very important in today's
modern society. To promote equal opportunity to access higher education,
several countries, including Egypt, have long implemented egalitarian policies
to allow equitable access to it. Some studies, examining trends of gender bias
in higher education, provided evidence of improvement during the past few
decades. This enhancement, however, failed to reduce the sex segregation in the
labour market, and hence returns to education. Many studies attributed this
paradox to gender differentiation by field of study, particularly along the
humanistic-scientific dimension. Barone (2011), however, suggested the
care-technical dimension to contribute, as a second dimension, in the
explanation of the association between gender and field of study. Since no
research on this important topic has been conducted in Egypt, the current study
aims to investigate gender distribution by field of study in higher education in
Egypt since the 1952 revolution. To achieve this objective, the study first
reviews prior literature to identify the trend in female higher education enrolment
in the Egyptian context across four historical time periods characterized by
significant changes in the social, economic, and educational circumstances.
Next, the study investigates gender bias in higher education across the four
time periods and nine fields of study using a sample of 3826 respondents from
the latest round of the Egypt Labour Market Panel Survey (ELMPS 2012).
Multinomial logistic regression results suggest that the expansion in higher
education enrolment as a result of the adopted egalitarian policies were
accompanied with an increase in female enrolment percentage since the 1952 Egyptian
revolution. Moreover, there is a trend toward gender parity for most fields of
study because the degree of gender imbalance varies considerably within the
humanistic-scientific dimension, providing some support for the argument made
by Barone (2011). A supplementary analysis investigates the gender distribution
by faculty social prestige in Egypt. Results contend that females are becoming
over-represented in higher education in Egypt but do not hold an advantage in
the high prestige faculties.
Bölüm | Makaleler |
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Yazarlar | |
Yayımlanma Tarihi | 9 Aralık 2016 |
Gönderilme Tarihi | 23 Aralık 2016 |
Yayımlandığı Sayı | Yıl 2016Cilt: 2 Sayı: 6 |
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