What is behind the gender gap in economics distance education: Age, work-life balance and COVID-19

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate about whether gender equality in education has been achieved or not. Research efforts have focused on primary and secondary education, while there are fewer studies on higher education, and few studies refer to distance education. To contribute to address this gap, this article presents a gender analysis of educational outcomes in economics at Spain’s leading distance university, UNED, which is also the largest university in the European Union in terms of enrolment. The aim of the article is to assess whether there is a gender gap in academic results and to identify the sociodemographic and academic variables that may be causing such a gap by analysing how they shape such differences. Finally, the impact of COVID-19 is also considered. The results confirm that women underperformed significantly in our sample in terms of passing and scoring, especially among those between 30 and 45 years of age, who are more likely to have young children. When considering a distribution of family tasks biased against women, along with the higher average age of distance learning university students, gender gaps could probably be greater in nonface-to-face education. COVID-19 narrowed the gender gap during the lockdown period, as some men and women staying at home together were able to improve task sharing capabilities. After the lockdown, however, women’s results worsened compared to pre-COVID-19 levels. A possible explanation is that they had to continue performing the same family duties in addition to substituting education and caring services (e.g., nurseries and day centres for the elderly) that did not resume activity immediately or continuously.

Unraveling the controversial effect of Covid-19 on college students’ performance

“…These results are confirmed also for low-income, first-generation, and minority students. Castellanos-Serrano et al 14 focus on the academic consequences of the Covid-19 in gender inequalities by several education performances. They consider 7477 students enrolled in just one faculty from the 2016/2017 to 2020/2021 academic years.…”

Online and on-campus transfer students experienced different impacts from the pandemic

“…However, studies have shown that online learning is as effective as face-to-face instruction and broadens access and participation in STEM and higher education (Means et al, 2014;Drew et al, 2015Drew et al, , 2016Ardissone et al, 2020Ardissone et al, , 2021. Interestingly, one of few studies directly examining the pandemic's impact on students in online programs, Castellanos-Serrano et al (2022) showed that the gender gap narrowed during lockdown, which was attributed to improved task sharing abilities with both men and women at home but was worse after lockdown compared to pre-pandemic, pointing to unequal social constraints impacting student achievement. Also, much attention has been focused on the lessons learned from the pandemic on innovative approaches to increasing support, access, and inclusion to and reimagining STEM education through a remote modality (Bhagat and Kim, 2020;Maqableh and Alia, 2021;Mohammed et al, 2021;Selco and Habbak, 2021;Manier et al, 2022).…”