Although gender equality in higher education has been identified as an important goal by governments and organizations throughout the world, prevailing patterns of educational gender stratification have not yet been systematically examined in a comparative context. The proposed research aims to describe and to explain historical and international differences in women's representation in higher education in advanced industrial societies. Three distinct dimensions of equality will be considered: (1) overall female representation in tertiary education; (2) gender distributions across tertiary sectors (e.g., universities, two-year colleges, vocationally-oriented training institutes); and (3) gender distributions across programs of study. The first objective is to describe historical and cross-national variability with respect to these three dimensions. Although it is well known that women's overall tertiary enrollment has increased worldwide in recent decades, international trends in sectoral and programmatic gender segregation have not yet been rigorously examined. The second objective is to account for the observed patterns of cross-national variability. Three sets of explanatory variables will be considered: (1) structural features of the national educational system; (2) structural features of the economy; and (3) the prevailing ideological climate, or degree of gender egalitarianism characterizing the national culture. Analyses will cover 24 advanced industrial societies during the period between 1950 and 1995. The aggregate-level international and historical data employed are superior, in terms of comprehensiveness, level of detail, and comparability, to those used in any other previous research of this type. The project is also distinguished by its application of new log-linear modeling techniques to supplement traditional methodological approaches and measurement models. This approach mitigates conceptual and methodological difficulties that have long hampered comparative stratification research.
