Girls can do it – Supporting non-traditional career choices of women in vocational education

In collaboration with regional partners (EsFem - Slovakia, Gender Studies – Checz Republic, KARAT Coalition – Poland), the Budapest Institute takes part in a project that aims to raise awareness on the labor market situation of women in the Visegrad countries.

We prepared a brief study in which we examined the impact of horizontal segregation in secondary vocational education on women's employment opportunities in Hungary, and we discussed the results at a workshop with stakeholders.

We found that there is significant horizontal segregation in vocational education, girls represent the overwhelming majority, more than 80% of students in the fields of Education and Health Care, while less than 10% of students graduating from the fields of Mathematics, IT and Natural Sciences, as well as Technical Studies and Construction are girls. The negative labour market consequences of gender segregation are particularly pronounced for those graduating from basic secondary schools (that does not necesserily lead to a school leaving exam, „érettségi”). Gender segregation by field of study can explain half of the gender gap in employment rates, as many of the fields where women represent a majority – such studies related to as textiles, and trade – lead to substantially lower employment chances. Young women with a secondary vocation education would earn 1,7 percent less than men, and those with a basic vocational school 16,5 percent less due to gender segregation between fields of education.

All project partners prepared an analysis for their country, the results of these will be used to prepare a comparative study that will be disseminated in the region.

The project is funded by the Visegrad Fund based on our proposal developed in collaboration with the project partners.