The impact of social background on gender segregation in higher education

Norway and other Western countries saw a pronounced decrease in horizontal gender segregation in higher education during the 1970s and 1980s. The trend has since stagnated. This study examines the link between this stagnation and the expansion in higher education that took place around the same time. Using registry data from the period 1977 to 2011, we ask whether the educational expansion, that brought more students from lower social backgrounds into higher education, led to the stagnation of gender segregation across subjects in the 1990s. Sociological theory gives reason to expect that individuals from lower social backgrounds are more likely to make gender-typical educational choices than individuals from higher social backgrounds. The results confirm that lower social background is related to gender-typical educational choices for women, in the period 1977 to 2011. The link between social background and educational choices is less clear for men. However, the analyses show that the stagnation of the desegregation trend cannot be explained by larger numbers of students from lower social backgrounds enrolling in higher education, even though these students are more likely to make gender-typical educational choices. This is because the relative share of students with lower social background has remained virtually unchanged in the period studied, despite their numerical increase.