Higher education spends less on female students than male students, the study finds

In higher education, girls and boys do not benefit from the same spending of money. This is demonstrated by a note published on 27 October by Cécile Bonneau, a PhD student in economics at the ENS-PSL and PSE affiliated with the IPP. According to her findings, “female students’ spending on tertiary education is 18% lower than that allocated to their male colleagues.”

Female students make up less than 40% of the Grandes Ecoles workforce.

Cécile Bonneau, PhD student in economics at ENS-PSL and PSE and PhD student affiliated with the IPP

Gender orientation choices

However, more women than men enter higher education. According to this study, the reason for this disparity is due to the choice of orientation and “the strong under-representation of women in the sectors that benefit from the most important resources”, or the grandes écoles, university institutes of technology or even university courses in mathematics, engineering and computer science, where female students “make up less than 40% of the workforce”. Training “more expensive due to higher supervision rates”. The result is the same when public spending and private spending are added together (via the registration fees paid by parents). Thus “10% of students benefit from cumulative expenses exceeding 53,000 euros against less than 5% of female students”.

Long-term consequences

According to the author of this note, “these disparities (…) are cause for concern as the cost of higher education courses is strongly correlated with their wage performance. Gender inequalities in higher education spending could therefore contribute to perpetuating inequalities between women and men in the labor market. “Further proof, if lacking, of the snowball effect of gender inequalities.