Higher education segregation in Spain: Gender constructs and social background

The waning influence of ascriptive factors on occupational status has been related to the expansion of higher education systems and economic modernisation. The theory of Effectively Maintained Inequality observes that the horizontal stratification of university degrees is a strategy of social differentiation used mainly by the most advantaged social class to access the occupations that are better valued in the labour market. This article verifies the effectively maintained inequality theory by means of a statistical analysis of selected degrees, differentiated by gender and social class, carried out in a Spanish university during the period of expansion and consolidation of the higher education system. The results confirm the theory, but they are partially conditioned by the vertical stratification that alters the composition by gender of the contingent of students of less advantaged social class, in which women present a greater tendency to choose degrees that are less valued by the market.