Equal, but separate? Gender segregation in Brazilian higher education

• Grant number: 21/02230-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2021
• End date: April 30, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Economics - Economics of Human Resources
• Principal Investigator: Daniela Verzola Vaz
• Grantee: Leticia de Freitas Leal
• Host Institution: Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Osasco. Osasco , SP, Brazil

Abstract

We propose to study gender segregation in Brazilian higher education in the period from 2000 to 2020. As specific objectives, we intend to investigate whether the level of segregation presents regional differences, how it compares with the values observed internationally, in addition to discussing its potential impacts on the income gap between men and women in the labor market. We will use microdata from the Higher Education Census (Inep/MEC) to calculate segregation measures. Some of these measures are popular in the literature, such as the Duncan dissimilarity index and the Gini index, while others are less known, such as the general measure of segregation proposed by Hutchens (2004). This index has the advantage of being additively decomposable. Therefore, gender segregation is separable into two parts: one referring to segregation between broad fields of study, and the other corresponding to a weighted sum of segregation levels within these groups. We will interpret results in the light of interdisciplinary literature, discussing the factors that condition gender segregation in higher education and its potential impacts on the labor market.