The gender variable was only “discovered” in France in the 1990s, when girls started overtaking boys in successfully completing full-term secondary schooling. The discovery came twenty years behind the phenomenon, for when, in 1971, girls had become the majority of bacheliers [holders of the prestigious baccalauréat degree awarded to pupils after passing high school leaving exams], they’d broken through a highly symbolic “barrier” in the French educational system (Goblot, 1925). Several books and articles were published around this time debating the scope and limits of the “female success” and how it should be interpreted. The first was written by Roger Establet, who, in a 1988 article published in the Revue Économique, qualified girls’ progress at school as a “respectful revolution”. The fact that girls from all social backgrounds were succeeding was a major new development, amounting to “true subversion of social reproduction through schooling”: an unexpected revolution, not deliberately pursued–especially not in national education policy– and taking place within the tranquil reproduction of mechanisms for segregating girls and boys in terms of study options and degrees. Baudelot and Establet further developed these observations in their 1992 work, Allez les filles ! [Go, girls !], in which they explained the paradoxical combination of girls’ improved overall success rates with their elimination (or self-elimination) from the most prestigious high school options–mathsciences– by the fact that from an early age girls were socialized differently from boys, learning obedience, docility, attentiveness to others, and limited use of space, whereas boys learned how to compete, be assertive, and make extravagant use of space. While girls were therefore better adapted to the demands of school, boys won out when the competition got tougher and in terms of occupational choices. In a book published two years earlier, Marie Duru-Bellat had offered a more positive interpretation of girls’ “choices”: by opting for traditionally female study programs, girls were not following fixed stereotypes but rather making “reasoned and reasonable” choices, taking into account the kinds of job opportunities available to them, namely in the tertiary sector, and their future roles of wife and mother, which limited the possibilities of personal investment in an occupation or career. Other authors (Marry, 1989,2000; Terrail, 1992; Ferrand, Imbert, and Marry, 1999) stressed the role played in the historic reversal of gender inequality by girls having a personal project of occupational and social emancipation that parents, particularly mothers, supported.

All studies concurred on the importance of relating analysis of gender inequality to that of social inequality : “Today we observe interactions between sex and social origin that cannot be reduced to a mere sum of the two variables. Girls are superior in all social classes. Though the disparity between boys and girls is slight in the upper class, it increases as we go towards mid-level managers, clerical workers and sales and service staff, and manual workers.” (Baudelot and Establet, 1992). Jean-Pierre Terrail (1992) underlined the particular success of girls whose mothers are manual workers compared to girls whose mothers, married to manual workers, do not themselves work. In a study of male and female students at the elite, highly selective higher education institution known as the École Normale Supérieure, Michèle Ferrand, Françoise Imbert, and Catherine Marry (1999) found that being brought up in a non-sexist way by parents who support educational success for daughter(s) and son(s) equally plays an important role in orienting girls toward these highly demanding educational programs, where boys continue to dominate, and in their being successful in them, even compensating for a socialorigins handicap for some girls. Nonetheless, with the exception of a few authors such as Terrail (1992), this first set of major studies, concerned to emphasize gender inequality in schooling, did not systematically analyze relations between gender and class inequalities over the long term.

A number of non-French sociologists have quite clearly perceived the theoretical and empirical issues involved in relating the two. At the end of their analysis of social inequality trends over the twentieth century in thirteen countries (not including France), Yossi Shavit and Hans-Peter Blossfeld (1993) point up the enigma of stability in social inequalities (for eleven out of thirteen countries) combined with the fact that in some countries (United States, Sweden, etc.) girls were continuously catching up to and even surpassing boys. In all countries studied, educational policies had been put in place to attenuate social inequalities–with little democratizing impact and even some perverse effects (Prost, 1986). Meanwhile, there had been no policies explicitly aimed at equalizing the sexes.

This development remains to be explained. Some interpretations emphasize actors’ behavior. Determinist theories of “habitus” acquisition and transmission are currently used to account for social inequalities (the socio-cultural handicap thesis); a second theoretical approach attributes more importance to the choices of context-bound individuals anticipating or adapting to the constraints of a given, though not fixed, environment. Diego Gambetta (1987) sums up this duality with the terms “push” and “pull” factors. With the contextualized-actor model, more weight is attributed to the present than to past determinations. Nonetheless, it is not a total break from the determinist approach, the argument being that we will only be able to understand actors’ behavior if we know how they represent their situations to themselves, and a given actor’s grasp of reality is generated by an interpretive grid that exists prior to that situation. In this view, even though educational reform may make it objectively easier to accede to certain technical study options, girls will continue not to perceive those options as possible for them (Duru-Bellat, 1995). Here actors’ representations of the expected value of a given educational degree on the job or marriage market (representations of parents and/or young people themselves) play a fundamental role in school careers (Singly, 1987).

This will be our point of view here. We understand gender and social origin not as juxtaposed “determinants” or “variables” but as variables that function indissociably. Following other authors, we consider the development of educational “supply”, and thus of education policies such as coeducation, diversification of options and study programs, and increasing the flexibility and openness of the educational system as a whole, to be of great importance. [3]

Our analysis here is based on INSEE’s Education, qualification, and career surveys (Formation-Qualification Professionnelle : FQP) of cohorts born since the turn of the century. [4] After presenting key changes and developments in boys’ and girls’ school careers over the century in light of particular educational and economic contexts, we shall try to identify the social groups that initiated the dynamic of girls’ success and, more broadly, to analyze possible interactions between gender and social background in the genesis and development of school careers.

The same is true of the economic context. The job market has always been strongly marked for gender, and economic growth in the 1960s generated different job opportunities for women than men. Throughout the period, trends in proportion of women working and percentage of women in total occupied population also played a role, as did employment distribution.

TABLE I.
Features of the historical contexts in which cohorts attended school [5]

Duru-Bellat and Kieffer (1999, p. 43).

A crucial trend over the period was the fall in farming activity (more pronounced in the second half of the twentieth century) and concurrent rise in in-dustrial- and tertiary-sector jobs for men and in mainly tertiary-sector jobs for women. The increase over the period as a whole in proportion of women working out of all women aged 15 to 64 may seem moderate. From 1931 to 1985 it went up 7.5 points, from 48.4% to 55.9%, dipping in the late 1950s, then mounting continuously to the present. In 2000,61.7% of women in France aged 15-64 were working. [6] In fact, the figures mask the scope of the phenomenon. Length of working life decreased over the period due to prolonged education and lower retirement age. This explains the decrease in employment rate among men : close to 100% early on in the period, it fell by more than 20 points, and in 2000 stood at 74.1%. This development was counterbalanced by the major increase in proportion of intermediate-age (25-54) women working–up by more than 37% in 59 years, from 41.2% in 1931 to 78.4% in 2000. The increase was even more spectacular among mothers of two children : for women aged 35 to 49, it went from 26.1% in 1962 to 75.9% in 2000. Perception of this development is further complicated by the fact that wives or partners of self-employed businessmen of various sorts (namely farmers) had not always been counted in the labor force. The result of these developments is marked compression of differences in occupation rates for men and women. For occupied persons aged 15-64 the difference was 51.2 percentage points in 1931, a mere 12.4 in 2000.

The major trends in educational program offerings and employment supply briefly indicated above transformed what girls expected to be able to accomplish by investing themselves in their education. In the increased proportion of women working and the expanded tertiary sector, girls found occupational models and reasons for investing themselves in studies.

Still, average school-leaving age is an imperfect indicator of success in school since it does not distinguish between improved schooling level and repeating a year, not to mention switches from one specialization to another at the same level – eg, successively obtaining two vocational degrees– though these phenomena were probably more relevant for boys than girls. It is therefore necessary to look more closely at school careers.

TABLE II.
Trend in average school-leaving age by cohort and sex

INSEE’s FQP surveys of 1977,1985, and 1993, made available by the LASMAS-IdL. 1964-73 generations have been omitted as not all pupils had left school at the time of the survey.

Access rates to successive education system levels and changes in those rates shed light on this question. We will examine differences in rates for girls and boys of access to first and last years of collège, first year of lycée, and obtention of the baccalauréat, distinguishing rates for school population as a whole (Table III) from those for the subgroup of pupils who entered first year of collège (Table IV). The second of these informs us about how much selection went on within secondary schooling as reflected in drop-out rates and, above all, as a result of moves into vocational training immediately after second or third year of collège.

TABLE III.
Boys’ and girls’ access rates to successive schooling levels (all generations) [7] [8]

Figures for each generation come from the first survey conducted after that time. Due to changes in the questionnaire there have been slight changes in variable construction.

TABLE IV.
Boys’ and girls’ access rates to successive schooling levels (pupils already in collège)

From a first reading of these tables we observe that 1) girls started catching up with boys a long time ago, and 2) there have been breaks in the pace of this general trend. [9]

Looking more closely at developments for the population as a whole (Table III), we see :

Of particular interest in observing school career inequalities (Table IV) are access rates to last year of collège. It is at this level that gender inequalities are most marked. Girls’ lead began increasing in the 1949-53 generations, with the odds ratio later reaching a low of 0.5. This had to do with the fact that in collège girls were tracked or guided differently than boys. At the end of second year of collège, boys were more likely than girls to move into part-time pre-vocational programs or full-time vocational programs (CAP : Certificat d’Aptitude Professionnelle). With generalized entry into collège in this period, selectiveness within the system increased, but girls’ higher success rates, combined with their demand for education, were strong enough to resist this. It must also be underlined that the 1949-53 cohort, in which girls’ lead increased, grew up in a context of economic growth and major increases in proportion of women working, particularly in the tertiary sector. This fueled girls’ demand for education. Between 1962 and 1974, the percentage of tertiary jobs rose from 55.1% to 64.6%. [10]

Differences in occupational orientation are also reflected in figures for access to first year of lycée. Girls’ lead increased in the 1959-63 cohort. In fact, more boys were heading, at a faster rate, for the new vocational degree called BEP (Brevet d’Études Professionnelles) that had been established in 1967; these degree programs were open to collège pupils at the end of their last year. Girls were more likely to prolong general education, thereby enjoying better access rates to both the general academic baccalauréat and the technical version, the degrees that open the way to higher education.

To summarize we can say that major institutional modifications–free secondary schooling from 1930, vocational training programs starting directly after collège from the early 1960s and after second year of collège from the late 1960s, above all the fact that young people were staying in school longer– modifications all made in the economic context of an expanding tertiary sector, accelerated the pace at which girls caught up to boys. In the pre-war generations (1929-38), girls overtook boys for entrance and successful completion of collège; in the war and immediate post-war generations for entry and successful completion of lycée. In the 1949-53 generations they overtook boys in obtaining the full general-education baccalauréat. At all levels, girls’ advance over boys is particularly marked for the 1959-63 generations; it decreased in the decade immediately following (1964-73). These results converge with Thélot and Vallet’s (2000). For number of years in school or highest degree, the reversal took place at the end of the 1960s. Terrail (1992) shows that girls’ lead, a consequence of generalized prolonged schooling, began in the generations born in the late 1940s and was consolidated in cohorts born in the 1950s.

These developments corresponded to both absolute and relative improvement in girls’ obtaining of educational qualifications (Table V). If we contrast young people leaving school with no degree or with a CEP [primary school certificate] to young people with a higher general degree or a vocational one, we can say that equality was first reached in the generations born in the late 1950s. In higher education, too, girls’ lead was consolidated in the 1959-63 generations.

TABLE V.
Distribution of educational degrees by sex and cohort (%)

FQP 1964 (to 1939), FQP 1977 (to 1949), FQP 1985 (to 1964), FQP 1993 onward.

In terms of length of schooling as reflected by average age upon leaving school (Table II), girls did not catch up with boys until relatively late (1959-63 generations). This is explained by the fact that in the preceding generations boys were more likely to take longer vocational training programs of the CAP type, whereas girls were more likely to choose general-study programs such as the CEP or BEPC. An analysis of developments in gender inequality should thus take into account gender-differentiated access to vocational training.

Still, there are a few research studies on the history of girls’ vocational training (Charlot and Figeat, 1985; Pelpel and Troger, 1993; Moreau, 1994, 2000). All stress that this educational world remains essentially a male one, with girls concentrated in a small number of specializations closely related to the domestic sphere (housework, sewing, care of children and the sick). Most interpretations evoke women’s status as the dominated sex and a strong social resistance to women acquiring occupational skills. Destined to become wives and mothers or hold unskilled jobs, women were understood not to need vocational training. “For a long time, vocational training for women was developed solely on the basis of what were considered their ‘natural qualities’; all training was aimed at instilling moral values and making women fit for their place in the home.” (Baudelot and Establet, 1992).

Training supply reflected this understanding. Patrice Pelpel and Vincent Troger (1993) point out that the Écoles Nationales Professionnelles (ENPs, state-run vocational schools), set up in the 1880s with the aim of training mid-level industrial managers, long remained entirely male. It was not until 1929 that the first ENP for women was opened, at Bourges. Others followed, all in the industrial sector–garment, lingerie, also the hotel business and scientific laboratory work– but only one quarter of the 20,000 students enrolled in them in 1959 (just before the ENPs were integrated into the technical-lycée framework) were girls. There were also more boys than girls in the Écoles Pratiques de Commerce et d’Industrie (EPCIs; they would become technical collèges, then technical lycées). It was only with the take-off of tertiary-sector training in the 1960s, in the framework of separate Collèges d’Enseignement Technique (CETs; technical collèges), that high numbers of girls began acceding to vocational and technical training.

We think, along with certain women historians of education (Gardey, 1998; Schweitzer, 1998), that this analysis underestimates the weight of vocational training for girls. Research has tended to focus exclusively on the public sector and general education, whereas it is the private sector and local initiatives that have been more central to girls’ vocational training, namely on-the-job training in companies and public administrations. Likewise underestimated in historical accounts of women at work is career diversity as a function of social origin. In the 1880s, middle-class educated women, hardly implicated in the working world until then, made their entrance into the office, at that time still largely male. Delphine Gardey (1999) describes the woman typist as “the main figure in twentieth-century history of women at work; the indispensable collaborator in administrations and companies before the computer age”. The expansion and diversification (in particular the rationalization of office work) that went along with these jobs during and after World War I also went hand in hand with their being increasingly occupied by women, with a de-skilling of the typist occupation and hiring of women of lower social origin with less education. In the 1930s, however, with the emergence of the job-type “secretary”, new careers became available to women office workers. As the “elite of typists”, secretaries generally had to have a higher education level (secondary, even college), and the jobs were mainly available to young women of higher social background.

It would likewise be reductive to understand girls’ longer academic (as opposed to vocational) schooling as mere evidence of the fact that society has had difficulty recognizing–when it hasn’t denied– that girls really do learn vocational skills and that what they learn is not solely related to any supposed “natural qualities”. The history of girls’ vocational training shows that employers have long been interested in having girls learn skills that have nothing natural about them, require hours and hours of practice, and were practiced not only in the home but in employer-run schools. Needlework and speedtyping are examples. These skills were certainly acquired and used, though the women who possessed them were often overqualified for the jobs they held and underpaid. [12]

Table VI, presenting proportion of vocational degrees obtained by men and women in the different cohorts, shows that women have long acquired vocational training. Although fewer women than men attain CAP level today (see Table V), the gap began closing in generations born in the late 1950s. At the level just above the CAP, ie, BEP or equivalent, women have been ahead since 1939-48. We can hypothesize that this resulted from a combination of two developments : first, increased supply of tertiary-sector education (for jobs of secretary, accountant, and so forth) made available by the establishment of full-time vocational schools–this brought to the policy fore the idea that vocational training should be equal for the two sexes– and the creation of the BEP in 1967; second, the massive increase in tertiary jobs.

TABLE VI.
Obtention of technical degrees by boys and girls, all levels (%) [13]

FQP 1964 (until 1939), FQP 1977 (until 1949), FQP 1985 (until 1964), FQP 1993 (1964-1973).

Expanding study option and degree “supply” at general education lycées enabled girls to accede to higher technical degrees than boys. Girls took greater advantage of the development of in-lycée vocational training programs (BEP, technical baccalauréat) and above all of occupational training at the post-bac, higher education level (BTS and DUT), once again mainly in the tertiary sector. General study programs in fact prepared students directly for a number of tertiary jobs, and graduates from them also moved into higher education occupational qualification programs (BTS, DUT, business degrees, and so forth).

The fact that girls caught up with boys in the areas of vocational and technical training is not stressed as often as their catching up in access to general education. In fact, in the last cohort (1964-73), almost as many girls as boys obtained a CAP, BEP, technical baccalauréat, BTS, or DUT.

If we consider only general-education options leading to the baccalauréat, we see from Table VII that boys were ahead in all cohorts for access to the most prestigious option–math-sciences– which opens the door to the most selective institutions of higher learning (engineering schools and other grandes écoles) and best prepares students for the labor market. [14] Though boys’ lead decreased in the youngest cohorts, it remained quite marked.

TABLE VII.
Proportion of “math-sciences” bacheliers by sex and cohort

FQP 1970,1977,1985. The last cohort (1964-1973) is not included because the 1993 FQP survey sample was smaller than for preceding ones and figures were not significant for C or S program bacheliers.

We calculated the rate of obtaining a math-science baccalauréat by sex as 6.4% for boys and 4% for girls for the last set of cohorts, giving an odds ratio of 1.6. Boys’ lead here is about the same as in the oldest generations (born before 1929) for access to any baccalauréat. The sticking point of gender inequality thus seems to have moved from access to baccalauréat in the oldest cohorts to access to a “math-science” bac in the most recent generations. It should also be noted that recent Education Ministry figures for a 1989 cohortstudy panel (Coëffic, 1998) show that from the first to the second panels (ie, pupils who entered first year of collège in 1980 and 1989 respectively) differences between boys’ and girls’ access rates to the different baccalauréat options remained highly stable. While the average girl-to-boy ratio for access to the bac was 1.3 at the end of the period, it was 4 for the literature program (6 in 1980); 1.6 for economics-social sciences (1.5 in 1980); 0.8 for math-science (0.9 in 1980), 0.1 for industrial sciences and technologies (STI) (0.2 in the 1980 version of this program) and 2.0 in tertiary-sector sciences and technologies (STT) (2.2 in the 1980 equivalent of this program). In 1998 23% of boys obtained mathematics baccalauréats against 11.5% of girls; 18.3% of boys obtained physics baccalauréats against 8.5% of girls.

Our history is clearly one of a reversal in gender inequalities in favor of girls, though we cannot say how long this will last. [15] However, girls also continued to choose less promising options and directions, and gender splits by option were maintained. There are still fewer girls than boys in the most selective scientific options, the ones that open a way to the highest number of grandes écoles. There are also fewer girls in technical programs. The fact that girls have succeeded better than boys in general education and progressed greatly in secondary schooling as a whole has enabled them to benefit from the development of selective higher-education technical and professional programs (BTS, DUT, medical and business programs), but they have not attained full equality. In 1999, male bacheliers’access rate to post-baccalauréat preparatory schools that prepare for admission to the grandes écoles was 8.9% while for bachelières (girls) it was 5.4%. For access to the Instituts Universitaires de Technologie [IUTs, where the two-year higher education technical degree, the DUT, is taken], the figures were 11.3% for boys and 6.4% for girls. In higher education, girls lead only in entry into academic university programs (not IUTs or STSs): 47.3% of girls go into such programs as opposed to 37.3% of boys. [16]

The first question is, what is the breadth of gender inequalities relative to social inequalities over the period studied ? We can hypothesize that gender inequality was not as great as the social-background variety.

The second question is if and how these two inequality types mesh, whether they interact. If the two types are found to do no more than “add up”, there is no interaction. It would then be correct to speak of a double handicap. There is also the possibility of one compensating for the other, ie, the fact of being a girl systematically compensating for a social-origin handicap. In this case, of course, we would have interaction.

Interaction, if found, may be analyzed in two ways. We could focus on social inequalities, checking if they are as great for girls as boys, expecting, for example, that they are attenuated among girls. It is conceivable that what is at stake in scholastic success is perceived as less relevant for girls than boys in all social groups, that across social categories the assumption is that girls always have the alternative of investing themselves exclusively in the family. This would result in less socially differentiated schooling strategies among families. Or we could focus on gender inequalities within each social category, checking if they are more pronounced in one, or some, than others. [17] We can assume, for example, that girls’ lead in schooling is stronger in businessowning families, given that boys more often inherit such concerns than girls and may therefore leave school earlier.

These two perspectives, while quite distinct when it comes to interpretation, cannot really be dissociated in empirical analysis of schooling. And there is a third question, which concerns the relational dynamic between gender and social category : in which social groups were the observed developments initiated ?

Let us first examine developments in gender inequality for manual workers’ and cadres’children at the different school stages.

For entrance into first year of collège, gender inequality appears different at these two ends of the social spectrum. Among the working-class, girls surpassed boys as early as the 1929 generation. The “double handicap” is thus valid only for cohorts born before 1929; after that, girls benefited more than boys from the gradual opening up of this schooling level. Among cadres’ children, girls were ahead of boys throughout the period. The breadth of social inequalities (represented by the odds ratio) was higher among girls than boys through the 1939-48 generations, then fluctuated as virtually all children entered first year of collège.

For access to last year of collège the picture is very similar. Among cadres’ children, girls were ahead from the first cohort (born before 1929) and remained so as access to this level became general for both sexes. Among manual workers’ children, on the other hand, girls only moved ahead of boys starting in the 1929-38 generations. Their lead increased through the 1964-73 generations, a development linked to the fact that boys were more often directed toward vocational schooling (or apprenticeship) after second year of collège. The differences in access rate for sons and daughters of manual workers were great : 20 points for the 1959-63 generation (41% of boys, 60.8% of girls), with an odds ratio of 0.4. The breadth of social inequality between manual workers and cadres was more pronounced for daughters than sons through the 1939-48 generations; after that, the situation was reversed. At the end of the period, social inequality for the two sexes reached the same high levels, and remained there.

As for access to first year of lycée, manual workers’ sons remained ahead of daughters through nearly the first half of the twentieth century (up to the 1949-53 generations). At this level, then, the double handicap claim corresponds to a more entrenched reality. It may be explained by the fact that even though boys were more likely to start technical and vocational training, highly valued at the time, they nonetheless prolonged their studies longer than girls in general education (second year of lycée and baccalauréat). Boys were also ahead among cadres’ children through generations born before 1939, with much higher access rates than manual workers’ children. During the 1954-58 and 1959-63 generations, the creation of BEP vocational degree programs, to be started directly after first year of lycée, reduced access rates to second year, but this primarily affected manual workers’ sons. During what may be called a transitional period, social inequalities were greater among boys. Cadres’ children were hardly affected by creation of the BEP; throughout the period, their access rates to second year of lycée were above 80%. An overall increase in access to second year intervened in the last cohort. Boys of working~class origin were the primary beneficiaries. This meant that at the end of the period, there were comparable degrees of social inequality for boys and girls.

Lastly, let us consider obtention of full baccalauréat degree. Up until the 1950s generations, internal selectiveness in the second level of secondary education was high, due to the fact that the baccalauréat was taken in two successive parts. This explains the fall in access rates between second year of lycée and full bac. [18] Among cadres’ children in the earliest cohorts there was a 10-point gap in favor of boys. Starting in the generations born during World War II, the majority of cadres’ children obtained the bac and girls reached boys’ level, moving ahead of them in the 1954-58 generation. Among manual workers’ children, whose access rates remained very low, boys were ahead. In this social category, girls’ double handicap thus lasted till the 1939-48 generations. Later, girls of working-class origin moved ahead more quickly than girls from well-off families (8-point difference between boys and girls for the 1959-63 generation). At this date the odds ratio representing gender inequality was 0.5 (in girls’ favor) for manual workers’ children, whereas for cadres’ children the situation was closer to equality, with an odds ratio of 0.9. Altogether, social inequalities decreased more among girls than boys, reaching comparable degrees at the end of the period.

TABLE VIII
Trends in access rate to the different educational levels for sons and daughters of cadres and manual workers (all generations) [19]

As shown in the graphs, the rank ordering of access to first year of lycée by socio-occupational category remained stable, and the same for boys and girls, with the children of cadres at the top and far above any other category – namely, the intermediate occupations, who are closer to the children of clerical and service staffs and self-employed business persons– and manual workers’ children at the bottom. The graphs also show a slight reduction in inequalities for the last two categories; they came closer to the mid-level categories, who for their part were far from closing the gap separating them from the most privileged group. We see a significant difference between farmers’ sons and daughters : girls’ position is closer to girls of middle-class background and quite distinct from that of manual workers’ daughters, whereas at the end of the period farmers’ sons remained very close to manual workers’ sons. This phenomenon arose from a set of distinct factors. First, boys were still inheriting the family farm, while for girls, studies constituted a sort of dowry. Second, increasingly rationalized agriculture and the diversification of skills involved in running a farm brought about a new division of labor within the family : girls turned toward training in management and accounting, which they then put to use on the family farm. Lastly, the 1960s policy of establishing collèges throughout the country facilitated the increase in number of children schooled.

In our first Logit models, not presented here, we aimed to get a general estimate of the new information that would be provided by taking interactions into account (Chi-square test to measure difference between the null hypothesis–no interaction– and interaction models). Overall, interaction effects seem slight, namely for first and last years of collège. Starting with first year of lycée, however, they are often significant (.05 level), namely for recent co-horts. It is therefore probable that gender has different effects by social category, putting one sex further ahead (or behind) in one, narrowing the gap between the sexes in another. To further explore the question, we constructed a second series of models enabling us to estimate gender effect within each social category (breadth and significance). As we don’t wish to overload the present account, we present the results in graph form (Appendix, Table IX), limiting ourselves to access to last year of collège and obtention of the baccalauréat.

Figures III and IV reveal the existence of gender-social background interactions : the curves show that the development of girls’ lead or handicap within each social category is quite distinct.

Gender effect is not always the same in the different social categories for first year of collège, though interaction effects are never very significant, namely when the rates are already close to 100%, as for cadres’ children. Nonetheless, in the 1954-58 and 1959-63 cohorts, the two that were affected by generalized entrance into first year of collège, the gap between boys and girls of working-class origin increased for a time. Clearer trends appear at the end of the first level of secondary school (access to last year of collège; see Figure III). Farmers’ and self-employed businessmen’s daughters, in particular, were ahead of sons of same. In these social backgrounds, boys interrupted their schooling earlier than in other social categories or moved into vocational training after second year of collège. These two observations are likewise valid (and for the same reasons), though less obviously so, for manual workers’ and clerical workers’ children. At second-level secondary schooling, namely for access to the baccalauréat (Figure IV), girls moved from being sharply handicapped at the beginning of the period to sharply ahead of boys at the end. How pronounced this reversal was and when it occurred varied by social category. Among cadres’ children the shift was least remarkable; it was sharpest among children from the working class. Girls from this background were subjected to a double handicap early in the period, but farmers’, craftspeople’s and shopkeepers’ daughters made up for the gender handicap and later firmed up their lead over boys more quickly than manual workers’ and clerical workers’ daughters. This development began with farmers’ daughters in the 1939-48 generations, then extended to all others in the 1949-53 generations. In all social categories, girls’ relative lead decreased in the youngest cohort.

We can now take up the questions posed at the beginning of this section. The answer to the first is affirmative : throughout the period and at all schooling stages, social inequalities were much broader than the gender variety (Table VIII). The odds ratios contrasting access to baccalauréat among cadres’ and manual workers’ children are around 40 to 45 at the beginning of the period and 9 to 12 for the last cohort, while concerning gender inequality, the figures are around 1.6 at the beginning and 0.7 at the end for all social categories combined. The odds ratios expressing inequality between boys and girls among cadres’ and workers’ children confirm that this type of inequality was secondary to social inequality. Gender advantage therefore could not compensate for social-background handicap, because the latter was always stronger. Interpretations that mechanically relate gender and social-background handicap or advantage, with the assumption that they either reinforce or compensate for one another, are thus in large part inexact. If social group and gender membership mesh differently by social category and historical moment, this is because, far from being variables whose meaning has been defined once and for all, gender and social group designate a broader situation where school career depends on other characteristics, namely characteristics of individuals and of educational, economic, and social contexts.

The second question concerned existence and interpretation of interactions between gender and social group, interactions to be considered from two angles : degree of social inequality for each gender, and degree of gender inequality within each social category. We found that social inequalities by sex clearly varied by category and time period. In cohorts born in the first half of the twentieth century, social inequality was more pronounced among girls. Later, in the period when short vocational options were being developed and chosen, it became more pronounced for boys. Finally, in the most recent co-hort, degree of social inequality did not differ strongly by gender, except for obtention of baccalauréat, where social inequalities are slightly greater for boys than girls. This seems to confirm Terrail’s hypothesis (1995) that families have begun perceiving and investing similarly in boys’ and girls’ education.

As for gender inequalities, they were slightly less pronounced for cadres’ than manual workers’ children throughout the period. For the last cohort (1964-73), for example, cadres’ daughters were only slightly ahead of sons (with an odds ratio of 0.9 for obtention of full bac), whereas manual workers’ daughters had a slightly more pronounced lead over sons (0.7 odds ratio).

To sum up, the thesis of the double, gender-social background handicap seems confirmed only for the first half of the twentieth century, in cohorts born before 1929 for first level of secondary schooling, before 1949 for second level. We then see a two-fold development : reduction in social inequalities and reversal of gender inequalities. The decrease in social inequalities began earlier and was more pronounced for girls than boys. In effect, democratization (in terms of access to long general, as opposed to vocational, educational programs) was undercut for boys by the diversification of study options, which from 1960 to 1985 went together with expanded socially marked short vocational options. Girls took greater advantage than boys of general education programs. Cadres’ daughters’ quickly moved ahead of sons in this social group where both boys and girls went to school in large numbers and social inequalities between the sexes were slight. This was probably because they succeeded better in school. Self-employed business persons’ daughters, followed by those of manual and clerical workers, caught up with sons later but moved further ahead than cadres’ daughters did of cadres’ sons because boys in these social categories chose vocational education relatively early. The increase over the century in number of children attending school longer thus had different effects on social inequality by gender.

Over the century the relative positions of girls and boys with regard to schooling changed radically. While at the beginning of the period social class and gender inequalities may be said to have reinforced each other, girls quickly moved ahead of boys in all social categories. This historic reversal of gender inequalities has to do with the changed meaning that girls, their families, and French society at large attribute to girls having an educational degree. In bourgeois families a degree is no longer (or not only) a kind of dowry for the marriage market, and among the working-class it is no longer only the means of perfecting homemaking skills (home economics, sewing, caretaking, etc.) that may be useful both in manual jobs (where the fact that these constitute skills at all is often denied) and in the life of a wife and mother. For all girls, having a degree has become a guarantee of occupational integration, financial autonomy and, beyond these, personal emancipation.

Girls’ investment in schooling was facilitated by the job market situation. The increase in skilled tertiary-sector jobs beginning in the early twentieth century provided young women with employment opportunities and in some cases an occupational career. The 1930s economic crisis reinforced the sense that it was necessary to succeed in school, with the degree becoming an ever-more necessary condition for getting and keeping employment. The continuous development of study and degree option supply, together with increasing and increasingly diverse job opportunities for women, fueled a dynamic of expanding employment for women in the teaching, health, and child-care professions, among others (Lefaucheur, 1992).

The fact that girls’ educational orientation has changed from literature to law, economics, and business is linked to that expansion and the diversification of skilled tertiary-sector jobs. Girls have benefited all the more from increasing job opportunities in these fields because, aware that the degree is a necessary condition for access to them, they push themselves to succeed in obtaining it. But the expansion and diversification of education programs has been faster than that of skilled jobs, and the training-job market fit was increasingly poor for girls over the period. The adjustment problem was especially pronounced since girls were concentrated in a small number of vocational specializations and general higher-education options. Girls and boys continue to choose different study options and degree specializations, and this major difference is hard to explain if behavior is interpreted exclusively in terms of job market expectations. To explain differences in orientation we should no doubt invoke the maintenance of moderate inequalities between boys and girls for success in certain options, namely scientific and technological. The sum of the effects of these differences on girls’ educational orientation has been observed to be high (Jonsson, 1999).

There is still room for explanations of boys’ and girls’ unequal school careers and unequal success rates in terms of family socialization; that is, the permanence of the habitus in gender representations and representations of social futures (Baudelot and Establet, 1992), and for explanations that emphasize sexist aspects of school pedagogy (Mosconi, 1989). But school careers and success rates are not ahistorical processes, as is attested by the changes we have observed here, and we are more likely to accurately measure and interpret those processes if we refer to developments outside school and family, namely in the job market and the relation between degrees and employment. Still, it is difficult to evaluate precisely the role of each of these structural developments. International comparisons, namely between France and Germany (Marry, Kieffer, Brauns, and Steinmann, 1998) show that the early, marked increase in number of girls being schooled in France had to do with a societal and historical context that was more favorable to women’s education and occupational activity than in Germany, as reflected in the French state’s strong implication in child-care (kindergartens, day-care centers for infants, and so forth).

Trends in girls’ schooling are also tied to a number of transformations of the family, such as adopting a more egalitarian ideal within couples (Kaufmann, 1992; Singly, 2000), greater likelihood of divorce, and decrease in number of large families, where mothers and girls often played an important domestic role (Battagliola, 2000). All these developments have reinforced girls’ aspiration to achieve occupational and financial autonomy and led them to invest themselves in their schooling. School was part of a general social context in which emphasis was shifting from social roles to individual aspirations and achievement. In directly analyzing behavior, it is instructive to take into account both push and pull factors.

TABLE IX.
Logit model explaining interaction between social origin and sex in obtaining the baccalauréat (binomial without constants)