Revisiting the gender academic achievement gap: evidence from a unique environment

ABSTRACT

This paper reports evidence on the decomposition of a gender academic achievement gap (GAAP) at the university level by type of college from a unique environment, where the majority of an undergraduate student population shares similar socio-economic and demographic backgrounds and attends the largest and only public university in the country. Results show that between 37% and 45% of the GAAP is due to gender differentials in observable characteristics, and between 55% and 63% is due to the differential in the rates at which productivity-related characteristics are converted into academic achievement. In humanities, the GAAP is a strong reflection of students’ performance at the high school level, whereas at scientific colleges it is also explained by the differentials in the returns to their respective abilities, and by the returns to their behavioral attitudes towards university education.

KEYWORDS:

• Labor economics
• human capital
• gender mainstreaming
• decomposition analysis
• higher education
• middle east

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Usamah F. Alfarhan is an assistant professor of labor economics at the Department of Economics and Finance, Sultan Qaboos University. His main areas of research interest are earnings differentials, inequality, discrimination and migration. He is the scientific coordinator of the economic module at the Gulf Labour Markets and Migration Program.

Victoria Dauletova is an assistant professor in the Department of Business Communication, Sultan Qaboos University. Her main areas of expertise are enquiry-based pedagogy, social identity, and gender communication. She has published articles on innovative approaches to business education as well as institutional discourse communication practices. Her research includes studies in Oman and Russia.

Notes

1 Source: Higher Education Admissions Center (September 2014).

2 With the exceptions of the College of Nursing, which nonetheless constitutes about 3% of the population, and the College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences, who rejected to cooperate with our data collectors.

3 Source: https://en.qantara.de/content/women-in-oman-we-are-better.

4 Source: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Sultan Qaboos University [grant number IG/EPS/ECOF/15/01].