Gender Differences in Tertiary Educational Attainment and the Intergenerational Transmission of Cultural Capital in Italy

We intend to highlight how female educational attainment in Italy has taken place while maintaining the influence of family and social origins almost completely unaltered, especially in terms of social inequalities measured via cultural capital. At the same time, however, we intend to stress out that the Italian growth and overtaking of female educational attainments has been more intense than the structural barriers posed by social inequalities at the origins. Furthermore, we aim to emphasize that the advancement of Italian women in secondary and tertiary education probably occurred in a context in which the demand for education influenced and shaped the provision of education, guiding the reforms of openness and democratization rather than being at the opposite a mere set of consequences of changes in the educational system.