Positively Maintained Inequality: Do Women from All Family Backgrounds Reach Parity or Surpass Men in College Attendance in China Over Time?

• In Event: 4318 - Higher Education: Students and Colleges

Abstract

Ample scholarship has noted a global trend in the reversal of the gender gap in college attendance and completion, with women gradually reaching parity or even surpassing men. While the findings are encouraging, it is important to consider whether women from all family backgrounds have similar experiences. This is especially the case in countries like China where recent research suggests that family background plays an increasingly important role in educational attainment. By analyzing nationally representative data from China, I explore the question: how do family background and gender interact to shape access to higher education, and how has that interaction changed over time? The findings reveal a pattern of what I term “Positively Maintained Inequality.” An overall decrease in gender inequality over time creates a perception of parity while at the same time masking differential experiences of women from different family backgrounds. Only women from advantaged family backgrounds reach parity or surpass men over time, and only in access to less selective institutions. Moreover, over time, gender inequality becomes more contingent on family background such that women’s opportunity to access college relative to that of men increasingly depends on their fathers’ educational and occupational attainment.

Author

• Yapeng Wang, University of Virginia