Background to the Research

• This study explores male-female differentials in the labour market. It focuses on the career experiences of male and females who entered higher education in Northern Ireland in 1979, and reports on levels of graduate employment and earnings, the effects of marriage and children and the significance of gender in explaining differentials in the labour market.

Research Approach

• All individuals who received a higher education grant from one of the Education and Library Boards in Northern Ireland for the first time in the academic year 1979/80 were included in the study. This cohort of entrants to higher education were surveyed by post in 1980 when they were first year students and then again in 1985/86 several years after most had finished their degrees.
  
  
• Multivariate loglinear analyses were carried out in order to control for the high level of interaction of religion with other variables and to reveal the more fundamental relationships.

Main findings

• Even when other variables are controlled for, gender is still significantly associated with secondary subject combination taken, subject type of university course, type of industry, type of activity and income both upon entering the labour market and for present job.
  
  
• There are no independent gender differences in academic attainment at either secondary level or higher education.
  
  
• Women are less likely to be in graduate level work and are more likely to be in non-graduate or routine nonmanual work.
  
  
• Women in work are generally paid less than comparable men regardless of level of work, level of higher education attainment, subject of degree course and marital status or religion.
  
  
• Being married appears to 'benefit' the careers of both men and women, but there is evidence of a cost to women who have children - insofar as they are less likely to work and less likely to be well paid if they do.
  
  
• While efforts to encourage girls towards mathematics or sciences may be well-advised, the results indicate that even if female graduates matched males in their subject choices and academic attainment they would still find themselves less likely to be in well paid graduate level jobs.