The expansion of education in recent years has clearly benefited women in OECD countries, including Spain. Women have taken a giant step in their access to higher education and in the last decade they have become more established, achieving that more than half have already graduated from a university degree or from a cycle of higher vocational training.
54% of women under 34 years of age have a higher education degree in OECD countries, compared to 41% of men, according to the Education Panorama report, OECD indicators 2023. In Spain, rates they are similar.
These trainings give better prospects for the future and employability. As the report recalls, having a higher vocational training degree or a university degree "is associated with better economic, employment and social results than lower levels of education." Furthermore, demographic winds are working in their favor. In aging societies, such as Europe, workers who enter the retirement stage are in the process of being replaced.
According to this report, published this morning, in previous periods, women were not as present in higher education as they are now. But the momentum of recent years has ensured that the generation of women between 25 and 34 years of age have achieved university or higher professional studies. And this in most countries.
In all the countries analyzed, the proportion of girls who reach these levels is higher than that of boys.
In Spain, almost 6 out of every ten women (57%) of ages in that group have these studies, compared to 44% of men.
Therefore, the difference between the proportion of men and women with a level of what is called tertiary education (higher vocational training or university) is almost 13 percentage points in favor of women, a gap practically equivalent to the OECD average. (12.8 points) and somewhat lower than the EU average (13.7).
Among the countries analyzed, Norway, Portugal and Sweden present the most disparate proportions between men and women with differences of more than 15 points between both groups.
Boys are the majority, however, in non-higher vocational training and basic studies.
However, women's access to higher education has not occurred in all areas of knowledge. In almost all countries, women are the majority in the field of health, education and well-being, but they are underrepresented in the field of science, technology, mathematics and engineering (known as STEM, for its acronym in English).
Thus, the study indicates that "gender stereotypes discourage women and men from pursuing certain higher education or university careers, particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in the case of women and health and well-being in the case of men. The OECD urges countries to design development policies that reverse these biases of both men and women.
If we look at higher vocational training degrees, women make up almost 80% of the total in the field of health and well-being in all countries.
In the area of Education, they are around 79% of the total in the OECD averages, reaching 91% in Spain.
However, in the field of STEM, essential in the labor market of the future, women are less than 25% in the OECD averages.
The most gender-balanced fields of study are services, arts and humanities and business sciences, administration and law.
There are also significant differences in favor of the education of women in the most vulnerable section, which represents those young people who only have ESO or have not even achieved it.
This is not good information, since young people are expected to be trained professionally or academically beyond a basic education. Here there are more Spanish men of this age (31.7% of the total number of men) than women (21.3%).
But this differential factor by gender does not hide the large number of people in Spain who do not graduate in anything other than compulsory studies.
They are many more than in any other country (except Brazil) and above neighboring Italy (25 and 19 percent, respectively), Portugal (24 and 14 percent) or France (12 and 10 percent).
The EU average is almost 14% for men and less than 12% for women, between two and three times the Spanish results (32% and 21%).
In the baccalaureate and vocational training sections, the differences between men and women is less than 3 points.
This contrasts with the OECD average where men are more likely to obtain a VET qualification than women. On average, around 60% of young adults with this level of education are men.
There are hardly any male teachers in the 0-3 years stage
There are hardly any male teachers in early childhood education. In 2021, 93% of second cycle early childhood education teachers in Spain are women (96% in the OECD and 97% in the EU).
According to the report, "this imbalance between teaching staff
raises questions about why women are so much more likely to enter the profession."
Some authors argue that gender stereotypes of women as caregivers contribute to the perception of teaching at the childhood level as a female profession.
"A balanced gender ratio among faculty exposes students to male and female role models and contributes to creating a diverse classroom environment." And he adds that although teachers do not reinforce gender stereotypes in their relationships with children, nor does the mere presence of male teachers correct this problem, academics defend that boys and girls' understanding of gender expands when they can observe a greater variety of gender expressions.
In this sense, as the figures show, very little progress has been made since 2013. In Spain, the presence of men as teachers has increased by 2 points in this period. In the OECD it is even lower, with only 1 point of difference.
The greatest growth is observed in Norway and Germany, while it decreases significantly in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
Another characteristic of these professionals is their age. There are few young people in most countries, including Spain (11% are under 30 years old) and with the exception of Japan (where almost half are between 20 and 30 years old). In general there are 2 teachers over 50 years old for every one under 30 years old.
This will involve the replacement of retiring workers. For the OECD, it is necessary to guarantee that younger teachers have professional development opportunities to avoid desertions. Survey data reveals that young early childhood teachers leave the profession more often than their older colleagues, perhaps because they are seeking new qualifications to advance.
This is a growing sector because, as the OECD recalls, all countries are trying to increase schooling rates at these ages, key to improving the educational success of children with fewer educational opportunities.
In 2021, 18% of children under two years of age and 43% of those who had reached the age of two were enrolled in early childhood education centers on average in OECD countries. In Spain the percentage rises to 24.7% and 56.2%, respectively.
The Spanish Government has set the goal of increasing public places by 60,000 before the end of this year. It has European funds for this purpose.
The report addresses other aspects of education in the world and in Spain. For example, it addresses the fact that young Spaniards have entered higher education intensively in recent years to the point that in the last seven years they exceed the averages of young people in all industrialized countries.
This growth of 9.5 points between 2015 and 2022 is greater than that achieved by international averages, which has been around 5.5%.
There are still countries, however, with more young people graduating from tertiary education (higher vocational training or university). These are Japan, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Norway, all of them above 55%.
Spain: finish vocational training with little work experience
Another notable aspect is the work experience of students in training cycles.
More than half of the young Spanish population (between 25 and 34 years old) has a degree in higher vocational training or university training. In total, they make up 50.5% of the population of this age, which is a figure higher than the average of the OECD (47.2%) and the European Union (EU25) with 44.7%.
Unlike Germany, where 94% of Vocational Training students acquire work experience of 7 or more months (paid or unpaid), in Spain only 4% of those who finished FP completed an experience of this duration. . In general, Spanish students finish vocational training with little experience in a workplace, according to the OECD. The new Spanish vocational training law that requires dualization of studies, that is, to increase training in workplaces, while working, aims to turn these figures around.
Germany (or the Netherlands) has a unique vocational training model that is different from that of most countries, with companies very aware of the education of young people. But Spain still falls short compared to the OECD average, which shows that 28% acquired more than 7 months of work experience.
Longer periods of training in workplaces are usually paid: in the Netherlands alone, more than 10% of people between 20 and 34 years old graduate in these courses.
Training in workplaces of shorter duration is more common, including in Spain, where a third of graduates declare having had an experience of one to six months in a company. It is similar to Finland and Sweden.
