Gender disparities in school-to-university transition in Italy: the role played by the socio-economic condition and the type of high school

The issue of the gender gap in university enrolment is widely investigated, and it is acknowledged that the school-to-university transition tends to be higher for female students than for males. Gender inequalities in access to the higher education system could derive from the persistence and transmission of gender disparities relying on several factors; in particular, in this work, we intend to assess potential gender inequalities in the school-to-university transition, which could be moderated by different students’ socioeconomic conditions or type of high school. Using the integration between two administrative data sources, the INVALSI database and the Anagrafe Nazionale Studenti (ANS) database, our final dataset comprises a total of 420,261 students of grade 13 who graduated in the school year 2018/2019, of which 215,565 are females (51.3%). Among those, 52.6% of all students enrolled in the following 2019/2020 academic year. Our results suggest that the proportion of female students enrolling in university is consistently higher than that of male students, regardless of the type of diploma or the socioeconomic conditions of the family of origin. Nevertheless, the gender disparity in the school-to-university transition is more pronounced among students coming from technical and vocational high schools and among those with low/middle socioeconomic and cultural status, leaving male students with less prestigious backgrounds even further behind.