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In recent decades, a dramatic shift has occurred in higher education throughout much of the industrialized world. For the first time in history, women are completing more education than men. Through the 1970s, women lagged behind men in the number of tertiary degrees completed in most nations. Since the 1980s, women have begun to reach parity with men and, in many cases, surpassed men in terms of their educational attainment. Today, out of the 30 member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), women comprise 53 percent of tertiary students, surpassing men in all but five countries: Germany, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, and Turkey (UNESCO 2005; see fig. 1). Most striking about these changes is that they are occurring across a large number of countries. This increasingly upward shift in women’s educational status will no doubt cause further transformations in these societies and have large implications for gender stratification worldwide.

The range of medicines and technologies that are essential for sexual and reproductive health care is well established, but access to them is far from universally assured, particularly in less developed countries. This paper shows how the pharmaceutical industry plays a major role in the lack of access to essential medicines for sexual and reproductive health care, by a) investing in products for profit-making reasons despite their negative health impact (e.g. hormone replacement therapy), b) marketing new essential medicines at prices beyond the reach of countries that most need them (e.g. HPV vaccines), and c) failing to invest in the development of new products (e.g. microbicides and medical abortion pills). Small companies, some of them non-profit-making, struggle to fill some of that demand (e.g. for female condoms). International patent protection contributes to high prices of medicines, and while international agreements such as compulsory licensing under TRIPS and the Medicines Patent Pool allow for mechanisms to enable poorer countries to get access to essential medicines, the obstacles created by "big pharma" are daunting. All these barriers have fostered a market in sub-standard medicines (e.g. fake medical abortion pills sold over the internet). An agenda driven by sexual and reproductive health needs, based on the right to health, must focus on universal access to essential medicines at prices developing countries can afford. We call for greater public investment in essential medicines, expanded production of affordable generic drugs, and the development of broad strategic plans, that include affordable medicines and technologies, for addressing identified public health problems, such as cervical cancer.

Author: Annemarie van Langen , Roel Bosker & Hetty Dekkers

Although the participation rates of females in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (or STEM) education is poor in most Western countries, considerable differences across countries exist as well. This may be due to differences in the so-called gender achievement gaps, that is, delays of one sex with respect to the other. The variation in gender gaps in mathematics, science, and reading literacy, both across countries and across schools within countries, is explored in the present study using the PISA data. The results of multilevel analyses show the participation of women in tertiary STEM education to increase as the relative achievements of girls with respect to boys in secondary education improve. When the characteristics of schools and countries are examined in relation to the size of the gender achievement gaps, integrated educational systems are found to be more favourable to the achievement of girls than differentiated educational systems.
 

Since 1998, upper level secondary education pupils in the Netherlands are required to choose one of four study profiles with their own specific and fixed combinations of final examination subjects. With the aid of multilevel analyses, the extent to which this situation has led to changes in the determinants of mathematics and science choice (i.e. selection of a science profile) is examined for more than 3500 pupils. From a meritocratic perspective, the relative contributions of background characteristics versus personal aptitude are examined. The introduction of the study profiles appears to have produced sharper lines with respect to sex and socio-economic status. Optimal use is thus not made of existing science talent.