Claudia Buchmann’s research while affiliated with The Ohio State University and other places

This study is the first to use nationally representative data to examine whether differences in gender-typical behaviors among adolescents are associated with high school academic performance and whether such associations vary by race or socioeconomic status. Using wave I data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and linked academic transcript data from the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement study, we find that boys who report moderate levels of gender atypicality earn the highest grade point averages (GPAs), but few boys score in this range. As gender typicality increases, boys’ GPAs decline steeply. In contrast, girls who practice moderate levels of gender typicality earn slightly higher GPAs than other girls. These patterns generally hold across race and socioeconomic status groups.

Girls have a substantial advantage over boys in terms of reading performance throughout all OECD countries. This paper investigates whether the structure of a country's educational system is related to this gender inequality in reading performance. We assess whether standardization of educational curric-ula and the age at which students are selected into educational tracks affect boys' and girls' reading performance differently. To test our hypotheses, we employ data from all six Programme for International Student Achievement waves enriched with contextual information on countries' educational systems (N ¼ 1,425,356). Results show that in country-years with more standardized curricula overall reading performance is lower and the association between standardization and reading performance is more negative for boys than for girls. In counties with educational systems in which students are selected into educational tracks at later ages, gender differences in reading are larger because girls benefit more from late selection. These results indicate that educational policies at the country level are related not only to the reading performance of all students, but also to the underperformance of boys in reading.

BACKGROUND Immigrant-origin students (i.e., first- and second-generation immigrants) comprise roughly 20% of the US school-age population. Despite growing awareness of a femalefavorable gender gap in educational performance, quantitative research on immigrant educational adaptation rarely considers whether there are differences in the educational adaptation patterns between boys and girls. METHODS Using a nationally representative sample of 2002 high school sophomores from the Educational Longitudinal Study, we examine gender-specific patterns of generational differences in high school grades and investigate racial/ethnic variation in these patterns. RESULTS Among whites and Asians, girls and boys exhibit similar patterns of educational adaptation as measured by high school grade point average, but there are significant gender differences in patterns of educational adaptation among blacks and Hispanics. Second-generation Hispanic boys, but not girls, have lower grades than their coethnic native counterparts, and first-generation black boys, but not girls, earn higher grades than their native peers. Class preparedness and instrumental motivation partially explain these gender differences in educational adaptation, especially among blacks. CONCLUSIONS The results reveal the heterogeneity in immigrant-origin youth's educational adaptation along gender and racial/ethnic lines and illuminate which students - in terms of gender, generational status, and race/ethnicity - are most at risk of downward mobility.

Academically-focused learning activities beyond formal schooling are expanding in myriad forms throughout the world. This diverse realm of learning activities includes private supplementary education purchased by families such as private tutoring, online courses, cram schools, and learning center franchises. Some public schools also provide academically oriented after-school programs beyond their formal curricula. This review identifies factors relating to students, families, schools, and educational systems that affect participation in supplementary education. Macro forces are also related to the proliferation of learning activities outside of formal schooling. We discuss implications of this trend for educational stratification as well as challenges it creates for families and formal educational systems. Finally, we suggest promising new avenues for data collection and empirical research.

Recent research has shown profound impacts of institutional settings of education systems on educational inequalities, i.e. systematic disadvantages and advantages in education being structured by characteristics like class, gender, ethnicity, (dis)ability and their intersections. The main education system characteristics which have been identified as driving forces are stratification (tracking), standardisation and vocational specificity. The text centres on questions of how and via which social factors and processes these characteristics of education systems produce inequalities – not only in educational attainment but also in status attainment and life chances. The first part of the book comprises contributions that focus on theory and methods to examine the effects of educational systems on educational inequalities. The second part contains works on the influences of social attributes on educational attainment in terms of competencies or credentials. The third and last part of the book centres on social inequalities in educational returns while including both job related factors (job prestige, income, etc.) and nonmonetary educational returns (health, well-being, etc.). Finally, a discussion on “good” and “bad” education systems centres on the question of how an ideal education system could look like.

Gender inequalities in education changed profoundly in the course of contemporary educational expansion. While public and scientific discourses have long focused on the disadvantages of girls and women in education, in recent decades the ‘failing boys’ debate and, thus the disadvantaged situation of boys and men, has become an issue of concern. This chapter discusses patterns of gender inequalities related to education in industrialised societies, including gender gaps in competencies, inequalities in secondary education, and gender segregation in fields of study within higher education. Starting from a general theoretical model of gender inequalities, it considers various theoretical explanations for the different types of gender inequalities in education, as well as reasons for changes in these inequalities over time. After providing an overview of empirical findings, the chapter concludes with a multilevel analysis investigating the way variations in educational systems and societal level characteristics impact gender inequalities.

It is well established that mothers are paid less than childless women and that fathers tend to earn higher wages relative to childless men, but we do not know whether these findings apply to workers in all occupations. Using IPUMS and ACS data from 1980 and 2010, we examine the family wage gap for highly educated professionals, the most advantaged sector of the occupational distribution. Results indicate that the size of the negative wage differential for motherhood has declined over time in all professions. Moreover, in the traditionally male-dominated professions of STEM, medicine, and law, women with children experience a positive wage differential, whereas their counterparts in female-dominated professions continue to experience a negative one. The positive differential for fatherhood has remained stable over time. These findings underscore the growing heterogeneity of women's experiences in combining work and family and raise important questions for further research.

Gender inequalities in educational attainment are of central concern today, in both public and scientific discourses. Prior to the rapid expansion of the educational systems of most industrialised societies in the 1960s, male educational attainment was higher than that of females nearly everywhere in the world. As the educational systems of industrialised nations expanded, both in the size and diversity of their populations, opportunities for women also grew, and girls benefited substantially. Today, throughout most industrialised regions of the world, girls attain better grades in school, take more challenging classes and achieve higher overall results. Due in part to their stronger academic performance, girls are now more likely than boys to enrol in upper secondary schools. Gender segregation in fields of study and vocations persists to the extent that men and women tend to specialise in very different areas. This chapter presents an account of contemporary patterns of gender inequalities in educational attainment in industrialised societies. It then discusses theoretical explanations for the different types of gender inequalities in education and the reasons for changing gender inequalities in education over time. It considers micro-level explanations of gender differences in school performance and educational attainment, as well as the impacts of variations educational systems and societal-level characteristics on gender inequalities in education. The chapter concludes with a multi-level analysis investigating how variations in educational systems and societal-level characteristics impact gender inequalities. Gender inequalities in education Gender inequalities in education are differences between boys and girls or men and women in a broad variety of aspects of education at different stages of the educational career. We define gender inequalities in education as systematic variations in aspects related to education that are structured along gender as an axis of inequality. Such aspects of education include access to educational institutions, placement in educational tracks or pathways, educational achievement as indicated by grades, test scores and credentials, as well as educational attainment. Other factors related to educational achievement and attainment outcomes, including student motivation, subjective well-being in school, interests and self-perceptions, can also be examined along gendered lines. Differences in aspects that can be hierarchically ordered such as grades, test scores and educational credentials are commonly referred to as vertical inequalities; aspects that do not directly relate to hierarchical ordering but to heterogeneity, such as field of study, are commonly referred to as horizontal inequalities (Charles, 2003; Watts, 2005).