Gender inequalities in educational attainment have attracted considerable attention and this article aims to contribute to our understanding of young women's access to higher education. The article is based on our in-depth interviews with 26 Hindu and Muslim young women attending colleges in urban Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), south India, and explores the barriers they confronted in fulfilling their aspirations. We highlight the similarities amongst the young women, as well as the distinctive experiences of the Hindu and Muslim interviewees. Financial constraints, lack of safety for women in public space, and gender bias, gossip and social control within the family and the local community affected Hindu and Muslim interviewees in substantially similar ways. For the Muslim interviewees, however, gender disadvantage was compounded by their minority status. This both underlines the importance of incorporating communal politics into our analysis and undermines popular discourses that stereotype Muslims in India as averse to girls' and young women's education.

Although communist ideology claimed to destroy former class stratification based on labor market capitalist relationships, de facto during socialism one social class hierarchy was substituted for another that was equally unequal. The economic transition during the 1990s increased stratification by wealth, which affected educational inequality. This study examines the relationships among parental education, gender, educational expectations, and mathematics achievement of youths in five post-socialist Eastern European countries, comparing them with three Western countries. We employed the 8-grade data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1995 and 2007. The findings point to the universal associations between parental education and student outcomes, whereas gender comparisons present interesting East-West differences. The theoretical and policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Utilizing mixed methodology, this paper investigates the relationship between self-esteem and academic achievement for young adolescents within two Western cultural contexts: the United States and England. Quantitative and qualitative data from 86 North American and 86 British adolescents were utilized to examine the links between self-esteem and academic achievement from the beginning to the end of their academic year during their 11th-12th year of age. For both samples, quantitative results demonstrated that fall self-esteem was related to multiple indicators of later year academic achievement. While country differences emerge by the end of the year, math appears to have a consistent relationship with self-esteem in both country contexts. Qualitative analyses found some support for British students' self-perceptions as more accurately reflecting their academic experience than the students from the United States.

What it means to be a 'student' varies within and between countries. Apart from the wide variety of school types and school quality that is experienced by young people, there also is, accompanying increased rates of school participation, a growing population of students who work part-time. The theoretical and actual consequences of student work have long been in dispute. This article reformulates the dispute as an empirical question that can be addressed using cross-national testing data and student background information from the Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS). Drawing information from 20 countries with distinctive proportions of students who reported paid and unpaid work, this study first compares their academic achievement in each country. Next, regression analysis is used to control for students' home resources, and estimates are made of the effects of work and the differences in these effects cross-nationally. Finally, hierarchical linear models are estimated in each country so as to control for school effects, and to take into account the fact that working students may be clustered in lower-achieving schools. The results show that work after school, whether paid or unpaid, never positively affects academic achievement. However, after controlling for home resources and school effects, work negatively affects achievement only in certain countries. The article concludes with a discussion of the ways to interpret international differences in the effect of students' work.

We utilized four waves of TIMSS data in addition to the information we have collected on countries' educational systems to examine whether different degrees of standardization, differentiation, proportion of students in private schools and governmental spending on education influence students' math achievement, its variation and socioeconomic status (SES) gaps in math achievement. : A higher level of standardization of educational systems was associated with higher average math achievement. Greater expenditure on education (as % of total government expenditure) was associated with a lower level of dispersion of math achievement and smaller SES gaps in math achievement. Wealthier countries exhibited higher average math achievement and a narrower variation. Higher income inequality (measured by Gini index) was associated with a lower average math achievement and larger SES gaps. Further, we found that higher level of standardization alleviates the negative effects of differentiation in the systems with more rigid tracking.

Using data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, this study examined gender differences in participation in various forms of nonformal learning-on-the-job training, distance learning, workshops, and private lessons-and their relationships with earnings in South Korea. We found significant gender differences in participation in on-the-job training, distance learning, and workshops favouring male workers, but the reverse gender gap in participation in private lessons favouring female workers. When it came to earnings, we found the positive relationships between participation in distance learning and earnings and between workshops and earnings for both males and females, even after controlling for other variables. However, the positive relationship between participation in on-the-job training and earnings was observed only for females. We highlight some unique aspects of Korea's organizational culture that may help explain the relationships among gender, on-the-job training, and earnings. Broader implications of the findings beyond South Korea are also discussed.