Gender differences in education and employment: systematic literature search with categorization

Key message

The Division of Health Services in the Norwegian Institute of Public Health was commissioned by the Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs to conduct a systematic literature search with categorization of empirical research about gender differences in education and employment.

Methods

We conducted a systematic review (of the format ‘systematic literature search with categorization’). In June 2020, we searched in major databases for empirical research, from Nordic countries, published 2019-2020. Two reviewers screened all retrieved records and considered relevance relative to the inclusion criteria. The main inclusion criterion was that the publication regarded reasons for gender differences in education and employment, or interventions that can lead to changes in these areas.

Results

We included 23 studies:

• 17 studies on reasons for gender differences in education and employment
• 6 studies on interventions and processes than can reduce gender differences in education and employment.

Just over half of these 23 studies concerned employment. Among the included studies, there was one systematic review and five qualitative studies. Most studies were from Sweden (n=10) and Norway (n=5).  

In this systematic literature search with categorization we have not read the publications in full text and hence not critically evaluated the studies. We have only categorized the references by type, based on the abstracts.