Women, Work, and Education

In the past, universities have been the domain of male students, in Canada, and around the world. But things are changing in Canada - According to the 1971 Census, 68% of 25 to 29 year old University grads. were male. Ten years later, women had caught up more or less as only 54% were male. By 1991, women had become the slight majority, comprising 51% of all graduates.

Youth in Transition Study shows that young women and young men were about equally likely to attend college.

What are the differences in academic performance and socio-economic characteristic between boys and girls? In general, girls perform better on standardized tests, have higher overall school marks, spend more time doing homework, and are less likely to repeat a grade in school, have higher expectations placed upon them by parents, and face higher economic returns completing a university degree.

Canadian 15 year old students are among the best in the word when it comes to science, reading and mathematics. (Results from the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

In both reading and mathematics, only Korea, Finland and Hong Kong-China performed better than Canada. (2007 figures) Interesting, there was a large gap in performance between Canada and the leading country, FINLAND.

Girls and boys perform equally well in science, though they excel in different competencies -Boys out performed girls in the sub domain of "explaining phenomena scientifically". Girls outperformed boys in the sub domain "identifying scientific issues". It appears that boys may be better as mastering scientific knowledge, but girls may be better at seeing the large picture.

Note: in 2009-2010, 10.3% of young men and 6.6% of young women had dropped out of high school. Rates for both young men and young women were significantly down from 1990/91, when 19.2% of young men and 14.0% of young women had dropped out of high school.