Education at a Glance: Major gender differences in education paths found among OECD countries – international comparison shows Finland's situation remains largely unchanged

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published its Education at a Glance, an annual publication of indicators describing education systems. This year, the report focuses on equity in education.

Education at a Glance examines such aspects as gender, socio-economic status and migrant background to gauge how effectively education systems can address equity.  

The educational pathways of girls and women differ significantly from those of boys and men in almost all OECD countries. In Finland, the gender gaps were found to be generally wider than the OECD average. Pathways through education differ in terms of the choices students make in upper secondary education, in terms of student participation in tertiary education and adult education, and in terms of the choices students make about their field of study.

Educational trends in Finland remain steady

Several indicators of the Education at a Glance statistical analysis indicate that the situation in Finland remains steady, including the rate at which young adults are falling behind when it comes to their level of education, the weakening of the relative level of education among adults, and the advantages of education. In Finland, the earnings advantage from tertiary education is high when compared with the other Nordic countries, whereas the earnings advantage from upper secondary education is non-existent.

In OECD countries, the majority of general upper secondary graduates are women (55%), whereas female vocational upper secondary graduates are in the minority (46%). In Finland, women account for the majority of those with both general upper secondary (59%) and vocational upper secondary qualifications (54%). However, among those under the age of 20, women with a vocational upper secondary qualification are in the minority also in Finland. 

Partly reflecting their choices in upper secondary education, women enter tertiary education more often than men in nearly all OECD countries. In OECD countries on average, 56% of new entrants were women in 2022. The gender gap is smallest in Germany, where equal numbers of women and men entered tertiary education. In Finland, women accounted for 57% of all new students, the average share of women having been on a rising trend since 2015 both in Finland and in OECD countries.

Gendered choices in fields of study

Choices concerning the fields of study are strongly segregated by gender in OECD countries. The majority of students who choose STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) are boys and men, while in education and in health and welfare the majority of students are girls and women. In Finland, the gender bias in tertiary education is even stronger than in the OECD on average. 

For example, 56% of men entering tertiary education in Finland chose a STEM field of study compared to 17% of women. Correspondingly, 7% cent of women and only 1% of men enrolled in the field of education. In health and welfare, 34% of women and 9% of men enter tertiary education.  

There are also gender differences in the participation in adult education and training. In most OECD countries, women participate more actively than men in adult education programmes. However, while on average the gap is only a few percentage points, in Finland it is 11 percentage points.

Equity is also examined from the perspective of students' socio-economic status. Parents' tertiary education improved the completion rates of upper secondary education both in Finland and internationally, whereas children whose parents have low levels of educational attainment or an immigrant background have a higher risk of not graduating from upper secondary education.

Earnings advantages from education 

In addition to equity in education, this year's report presents regularly collected comparative statistics on the state and outcomes of education systems. 

Education generates significant advantages in the labour market. On average across OECD countries, 60% of adults (25–64 year-olds) who had not completed upper secondary education were employed compared to 87% of those with tertiary attainment. In Finland, the link between education and employment is even stronger. The employment rate among those with tertiary attainment was 89%, compared to only 57% among those without upper secondary attainment. The economic profitability of tertiary education is at a relatively high level in Finland. 

Among those in full-time employment in Finland, tertiary education increases earnings by 39% compared with upper secondary education, clearly more than in the other Nordic countries (18–25% increase). In comparison, the earnings advantage from upper secondary education has remained exceptionally weak in Finland for a long time. Among the reference countries, only in Finland the earnings of those in full-time work who had not completed upper secondary education are only slightly higher than the earnings of upper secondary graduates. 

The trend in the relative level of education of young adults in Finland has remained steady. In terms of gender equality, an interesting small change was found in that the relative level of highly educated young women had declined to correspond to that of men. While some variation between the genders remain, with women having tertiary attainment more often than men, in the country comparison Finland's women and men now have the same ranking. In 2016, the share of highly educated women in Finland was still above the OECD average while the share of men with tertiary attainment was below the average. Across OECD countries, 54% of young women graduate with a tertiary degree compared to 41% of young men. The corresponding figures for Finland are 46% of women and 33% of men. While in Finland young adults have relatively low levels of educational attainment and older cohorts have relatively high levels of attainment compared to other OECD countries, among the entire working-age population the share of highly educated individuals is projected to fall to the OECD average and below it later in this decade.

Finland has lower education expenditure compared to other Nordic countries

Finland's total expenditure on education relative to gross domestic product (GDP) is above the OECD average but below the other Nordic countries. Norway ranks top in the OECD comparison. There is also considerable variation between countries in the relative shares of the levels of education, which is explained, among other things, by variation in the population age structure. While education is largely publicly funded in all OECD countries, Finland, together with the other Nordic countries, is among the systems with the highest levels of public funding. The increase in expenditure in many education systems where a high proportion of funding comes from private sources has slightly altered Finland's relative position when comparing investment in education.

Inquiries:

• Early childhood education and care, primary and lower secondary education, upper secondary education: Petra Packalen (Finnish National Agency for Education), tel. +358 295 331 162
• Tertiary education: Jukka Haapamäki (Ministry of Education and Culture), tel. +358 295 330 088
• Aleksi Kalenius, Ministerial Adviser (Ministry of Education and Culture), tel. +358 295 330 291

Reports with links to background statistics are freely available on the OECD website.

The national release of the report takes place on 10 September 2024. The event can be followed live in Teams starting at 14.00 (in Finnish)