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1977 to 2003

Women's participation in university has outpaced men's since the late 1970s. In fact, the gap widened substantially during the 1990s.

This study uses data from two Statistics Canada surveys to investigate the reasons for the differentials of growth in university attendance between 1977 and 2003.

Its findings suggest that a major factor underlying the steady increase in university enrolment among women is that it pays more for women to attend university.

The study showed that the financial return for both men and women with a university degree is proportionally higher than it is for their counterparts who have just a high school diploma. But this return to education has been consistently higher for women than for men since 1977.

Specifically, a woman with a university degree in 1977 earned $1.88 for each dollar earned by a woman with a high school diploma. The corresponding ratio for men was $1.63.

By 2003, women with a university degree earned $2.73 for every dollar earned by those with a high school diploma. The corresponding ratio for men was $2.13.

Between 1977 and 1992, the university premium for women was 16% higher than for men; between 1993 and 2003, it was 22% higher for women.

This higher premium for women and its growth relative to that for men explain a large part of the divergent trends in university attendance, the study suggests.

It points out that tuition fees, parents' education and family income are well-known important factors related to university attendance. However, these factors cannot explain why women's enrolment has increased steadily relative to men's.

The study found that the gap in university attendance between children from high and low income families declined more over the period for women than men, but this fact by itself did not account for the divergent trends.

In 1977, there were four people attending university from families in the top fifth of the income distribution for every person attending from the bottom fifth. By 2003, this ratio had fallen to only 1.6 for women, and to 2.7 for men.

The study shows that university participation for both men and women has increased within all income brackets, more so for women than for men. This suggests that other trends underlie the divergence in women's and men's university enrolments.

The study The Gender Imbalance in Participation in Canadian Universities (1977 to 2003) was prepared by Louis N. Christofides, Michael Hoy and Ling Yang (Guelph University) and is now available free at (http://www.utoronto.ca/rdc/papers.html).

The study was prepared as part of the New Realities in Gender Facing Canadian Society Project. This project is organized by Statistics Canada's Family and Labour Studies Division and features work conducted in the Agency's Research Data Centres.

For more information about this study, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Gustave Goldmann (613-951-1472), Research Data Centres program.