Breaking barriers

Nick Ford
Lund University

Christian Møller Dahl
University of Southern Denmark

Kristin Ranestad
University of Oslo

Paul Sharp
University of Southern Denmark

Christian Emil Westermann
University of Southern Denmark

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Among educational policymakers and practitioners, a central concern relates to observed differences between male and female students. In general, female students perform better in graded assessments than their male peers. Moreover, male and female students exhibit typically differ with respect to the subjects and courses they select into, contributing to gender disparities across a range of occupations.

We offer a historical lens on these contemporary trends, by examining Norwegian high school records over a period of more than a century. The high school grade lists contain detailed individual-level data on graduates, including parental information, school attended, program chosen, and grades in individual subjects. Our data series commences in 1813, with the opening of the University of Oslo — the first year the high school exam (examen artium) was held in Norway. From 1882, girls were permitted to take the exam and access university education.

Thus, we ask: To what extent did female students outperform their male counterparts after gaining access to high school exams in 1882? How did the academic performance of male and female students converge or diverge over time?

While the earliest female students on average received higher grades than their male peers, this relative advantage dissipated as the overall number of female students rose. By around 1910, we find no significant difference in grades between men and women. We also establish that this pattern — both the initial high female grades, and the convergence with male grades — is not the result of a decline in average male grades upon the entry of female students to high schools. Rather, our results suggest that the first cohorts of female students were particularly talented and motivated, but that as overall female student numbers increased, their performance across the grade distribution increasingly resembled that of their male peers.

By contrast, we find a persistent difference in what male and female students studied. The first female students mostly graduated from the natural-scientific Real study programme rather than the classical humanities-oriented English programme. This changed in 1903 with the introduction of a new English study programme (a variant of the Latin programme focused instead on modern languages, without the requirement to study Latin). The English programme (and eventually also the Latin programme) became the preferred fields among female students, while male students to a far greater extent pursued studies in the natural sciences.

Our paper provides evidence on long-term patterns of educational attainment. In particular, it examines the relationship between, on the one hand, access and enrolment and, on the other hand, student performance as measured by grades. The period we examine (1813–1929) captures significant changes in higher education in Norway: a rising number of high schools, changes in the courses offered, an increase in graduates totals, and the expansion of access to female students. Despite all of these factors, the distribution of graduates by household background (fathers’ occupations) is relatively stable.