Do vocational pathways improve higher education access for women and men from less privileged social backgrounds? A comparison of vocational tracks to higher education in France and Switzerland

Imdorf, Christian; Koomen, Maarten; Murdoch, Jake; Guégnard, Christine (2017). Do vocational pathways improve higher education access for women and men from less privileged social backgrounds? A comparison of vocational tracks to higher education in France and Switzerland. Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, LVIII(2), pp. 283-314. Società editrice il Mulino 10.1423/87310

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Text (Post-Print version) Imdorf et al. 2017 Do Vocational Pathways Improve Higher Education Access for Women and Men from Less Privileged Social Backgrounds_ Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia 2-2017.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Publisher holds Copyright. The author commits himself/herself - except where differently agreed in writing with il Mulino - not to translate or allow others to translate and/or otherwise publish the final draft post- refereeing of the article for a period of at least 18 months after its publication in this journal and, in any case, to not publish or allow others to publish the publisher’s version. Its making available to the public on-line (if any) shall also comply with the above-mentioned conditions and shall be exclusively performed by using the personal or institutional web site of the institution to which the author belongs. Download (555kB) | Preview

Educational policy developments in France and Switzerland have increased eligibility for higher education. This paper explores the extent to which vocationally orientated pathways to higher education reduce social inequalities in France and Switzerland. More specifically, we analyse how the vocational pathway facilitates access to higher education for male and female students from lower cultural capital backgrounds. We refer to gender theory to link young people’s subjective self-image and its corresponding institutional fit with different educational pathways. We use panel data from France (panel DEPP) and Switzerland (panel TREE) and multinomial logistic regression to analyse the accessibility of different institutional pathways to higher education for male and female students separately. Our results show different consequences of the two national educational systems with regard to social reproduction and gender inequalities. An intersectional analysis highlights that, in France, vocationally oriented programmes foster higher education access for young women with lower cultural capital. In Switzerland, the vocational pathway to access higher education is primarily used by young men from privileged educational backgrounds as a compensation for their underrepresentation in the traditional general education pathway to higher education.

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