The gender gap in graduate job quality in Europe – a comparative analysis across economic sectors and countries

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the gender gap in a wide range of labour market outcomes (income, skill utilisation, work autonomy, job security and work–life balance) for higher education graduates in different economic sectors, using combined REFLEX and HEGESCO surveys from 17 European countries. In particular, it assess how specific institutional characteristics (gender composition, different levels of educational attainment of the labour force, skill specificity and the private or public nature of employment) within sectors influence the early career gender gap in job quality for highly educated workers in Europe. The study finds that from the start of their careers, male higher education graduates receive higher wages, yet women report better skill utilisation, work autonomy and job security. In terms of institutional factors that influence gender differences in job quality, the paper finds support for the view that in sectors in which women are predominant they suffer an income penalty, but not in other aspects of job quality. Skill specificity of the sectors has been found to have very little explanatory value when it comes to graduate labour market.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• labour market outcomes
• higher education graduates
• gender segregation
• Europe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in DANS - Data Archiving and Networked Services of NARCIS - National Academic Research and Collaborations Information System of the Netherlands at https://doi.org/10.17026/dans-z3s-a2dh and https://doi.org/10.17026/dans-zx6-6tnq.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. As some individualist neo-classical economics accounts claim (Polachek, 1981).

2. On similar lines to individual choice arguments, Hakim’s (Hakim, 2002) controversial preference theory stipulates that women (and especially part-time working women) select occupations based on their values and preferences for certain life-styles.

3. An excellent overview of these positions has been provided in England, 2010.

4. A detailed description of the REFLEX project is available at http://www.fdewb.unimaas.nl/roa/reflex/ or in the overview report (Allen & Van der Velden, 2011).

5. A detailed description of the HEGESCO project is available at http://www.hegesco.org/index.php or in the project report (Allen & Van der Velden, 2009).

6. The two surveys used same questionnaires, have the same variable names allowing for easy merge of the datasets.

7. Most sectors are not exclusively public or private, e.g. in the health sector or education there are some graduates who work for private providers.

8. The EU Labour Force Survey custom-based extracts provided by EUROSTAT were limited and could not contain gender variable due to the very small number of cases in some occupations and sectors, hence the first indicator had to be derived from the REFLEX and HEGESCO survey.

9. Model for hourly wages is the same as Model 1 with additional country intercept ν_0k while other coefficients also vary across countries and have subscript ijk .

10. Random slope model for work–life balance was not modelled or reported due to non-significant fixed gender effect on this dimension of job quality (Table 4).

11. The majority of the used sample of graduate workers is the age range 26–34.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Predrag Lažetić

Predrag Lažetić a Prize Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath with the designated research theme of widening participation in higher education. His particular interests are in the field of labour market outcomes of higher education graduates, underemployment, job quality and the research into higher education policy.