| Abstract: |
When students are sorted into different schools based on academic achievement, it is widely believed that they consequently make more realistic educational choices. However, findings from large-scale nationwide mock exam data and qualitative interviews with students and teachers in selective high schools in Japan—where still only one in five applicants to the nation’s top university are women—challenge this understanding. Specifically, I find that, controlling for test scores in the mock exam, male applicants are significantly more likely than their female counterparts to aspire to and apply to “reach” schools. Qualitative interviews further reveal that male students use narrower school choice criteria, aiming for selective “reach” schools to maintain their broader, albeit less clearly defined, future opportunities when they graduate and enter the labor market. By contrast, female students exhibit a broader school choice set in terms of selectivity and prestige but have much clearer, though narrower, occupational plans. Their emphasis on vocational education and marketable skills reflects anticipation of career interruptions due to family responsibilities. Taken together, these findings provide theoretical insights into how cultural and institutional forces sustain gender divergence in educational and occupational trajectories by narrowing the universe of “imagined futures” available to women, with potential implications for inequality in higher education in other sociocultural contexts. |
