The implications of women's increasing access to higher education in the OECD countries

Over the past four decades, higher education institutions around the world have moved from elite to mass and then universal higher education. This change is seen as a consequence of globalization, and has led to reforms in the higher education sector through economic, academic, cultural and political rationales. This study focuses on one particular aspect of reforms: women's increasing participation in higher education, to identify and analyze its relationships with other socio-cultural aspects of women's lives. These relationships are studied in terms of a collection of life dimensions such as economic activity, earnings, family structure and political participation.