Not on the same track? Tracking age and gender inequality in education

In the past decades a female dominance in educational attainment emerged, a phenomenon coined “the rise of women”. This dissertation focuses on the role of the educational institutional context, more specifically the tracking age, in understanding gender inequality. In four empirical studies, it is examined whether the age at which educational systems track affects gender differences in various educational outcomes. High quality repeated cross-national surveys are used, that assess respondents in several countries at different ages and educational stages. Studying various educational outcomes at different moments in the educational career across a large number of countries and birth cohorts, allows me to examine how gender gaps in education develop differently in societies with different tracking ages. This dissertation highlights the importance of the setup of the education system for gender inequality and, more specifically, shows that the age at which educational systems track affects gender differences in various educational outcomes.