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What is behind the gender gap in economics distance education: Age, work-life balance and COVID-19

There is an ongoing debate about whether gender equality in education has been achieved or not. Research efforts have focused on primary and secondary education, while there are fewer studies on higher education, and few studies refer to distance education. To contribute to address this gap, this ar...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Castellanos-Serrano, Cristina, Escribano, Gonzalo, Paredes-Gázquez, Juandiego, San-Martín González, Enrique
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9359611/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35939444
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272341
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author Castellanos-Serrano, Cristina
Escribano, Gonzalo
Paredes-Gázquez, Juandiego
San-Martín González, Enrique
author_facet Castellanos-Serrano, Cristina
Escribano, Gonzalo
Paredes-Gázquez, Juandiego
San-Martín González, Enrique
author_sort Castellanos-Serrano, Cristina
collection PubMed
description There is an ongoing debate about whether gender equality in education has been achieved or not. Research efforts have focused on primary and secondary education, while there are fewer studies on higher education, and few studies refer to distance education. To contribute to address this gap, this article presents a gender analysis of educational outcomes in economics at Spain’s leading distance university, UNED, which is also the largest university in the European Union in terms of enrolment. The aim of the article is to assess whether there is a gender gap in academic results and to identify the sociodemographic and academic variables that may be causing such a gap by analysing how they shape such differences. Finally, the impact of COVID-19 is also considered. The results confirm that women underperformed significantly in our sample in terms of passing and scoring, especially among those between 30 and 45 years of age, who are more likely to have young children. When considering a distribution of family tasks biased against women, along with the higher average age of distance learning university students, gender gaps could probably be greater in nonface-to-face education. COVID-19 narrowed the gender gap during the lockdown period, as some men and women staying at home together were able to improve task sharing capabilities. After the lockdown, however, women’s results worsened compared to pre-COVID-19 levels. A possible explanation is that they had to continue performing the same family duties in addition to substituting education and caring services (e.g., nurseries and day centres for the elderly) that did not resume activity immediately or continuously.
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spelling pubmed-93596112022-08-10 What is behind the gender gap in economics distance education: Age, work-life balance and COVID-19 Castellanos-Serrano, Cristina Escribano, Gonzalo Paredes-Gázquez, Juandiego San-Martín González, Enrique PLoS One Research Article There is an ongoing debate about whether gender equality in education has been achieved or not. Research efforts have focused on primary and secondary education, while there are fewer studies on higher education, and few studies refer to distance education. To contribute to address this gap, this article presents a gender analysis of educational outcomes in economics at Spain’s leading distance university, UNED, which is also the largest university in the European Union in terms of enrolment. The aim of the article is to assess whether there is a gender gap in academic results and to identify the sociodemographic and academic variables that may be causing such a gap by analysing how they shape such differences. Finally, the impact of COVID-19 is also considered. The results confirm that women underperformed significantly in our sample in terms of passing and scoring, especially among those between 30 and 45 years of age, who are more likely to have young children. When considering a distribution of family tasks biased against women, along with the higher average age of distance learning university students, gender gaps could probably be greater in nonface-to-face education. COVID-19 narrowed the gender gap during the lockdown period, as some men and women staying at home together were able to improve task sharing capabilities. After the lockdown, however, women’s results worsened compared to pre-COVID-19 levels. A possible explanation is that they had to continue performing the same family duties in addition to substituting education and caring services (e.g., nurseries and day centres for the elderly) that did not resume activity immediately or continuously. Public Library of Science 2022-08-08 /pmc/articles/PMC9359611/ /pubmed/35939444 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272341 Text en © 2022 Castellanos-Serrano et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Castellanos-Serrano, Cristina
Escribano, Gonzalo
Paredes-Gázquez, Juandiego
San-Martín González, Enrique
What is behind the gender gap in economics distance education: Age, work-life balance and COVID-19
title What is behind the gender gap in economics distance education: Age, work-life balance and COVID-19
title_full What is behind the gender gap in economics distance education: Age, work-life balance and COVID-19
title_fullStr What is behind the gender gap in economics distance education: Age, work-life balance and COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed What is behind the gender gap in economics distance education: Age, work-life balance and COVID-19
title_short What is behind the gender gap in economics distance education: Age, work-life balance and COVID-19
title_sort what is behind the gender gap in economics distance education: age, work-life balance and covid-19
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9359611/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35939444
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272341
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