Ensino superior e género: diplomados e mercado de trabalho

The employability of graduates remains a concern, most particularly at times like the present where the unemployment rate tends to rise, and that higher education graduates are facing greater difficulties in accessing the labour market in Europe. Notably, women are characterized by higher completion rates of higher education, yet they seem to have greater difficulties in entering the world of work. Assuming that policies to promote gender equality have been strengthened in recent years, with particular emphasis in the EU27, we face some revealing findings of gender differences in knowledge as well as in academic and career paths. Using the methodology of cluster analysis, the paper considers a comparative study in the EU27 countries, with the aim to disentangle factors with the greatest significance for understanding the forms of segregation in access to the labour market. The power relations underlying the gender issue as well as the product of collective work and continuous diffuse socialization in embodied habitus clearly differentiated, leads us to admit that the training areas preferentially chosen by women are those that denote lower demand in the labour market. This paper is included in the Project PTDC/CPE-PEC/103727/2008 - Rebuilding the Portuguese higher education system’s network: challenges from demographics, economic growth and regional cohesion.