More and more Quebec women are obtaining a university degree compared to their male colleagues, an analysis by the Institut de la statistique du Québec reveals this morning.
In general, more Quebecers are university educated: in 2021, nearly 3 in 10 people (29.5%) aged 25 to 64 had a university degree in Quebec, an increase of four percentage points compared to 2016.
This is, notes the Institute of Statistics, the largest increase observed in Quebec from one census year to another since 1996.
The graduation gap between women and men is widening. In 2021, 26% of men aged 25 to 64 had a university degree, compared to 33% of women.
The highest gap (12.7 percentage points) was observed among those aged 25 to 34, with 29.3% among men and 42.0% among women.
For women, however, a university degree does not guarantee a salary equivalent to that of men.
A report published by the Institut du Québec and the FutureSkills Research Lab at the University of Toronto revealed in 2022 that one year after obtaining their post-secondary diploma, Quebec women earn on average 9% less than men.
“Worse still, this gap widens not only in the first years of a career, but it climbs to 16% five years after graduation,” the researchers wrote at the time, adding that women must deal with a “headwind throughout of their professional career.
Furthermore, women remain significantly underrepresented in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM). Two-thirds of university degree holders in these fields were men, notes the Institut de la statistique du Québec, which bases its analysis on the 2021 Census.
Among university graduates in Quebec in 2021, 27.3% were immigrants, “much more than their share in the population”, which was 18.3% among those aged 25 to 64, writes the Institut de the statistics.
Among the doctorate holders in Quebec, exactly half (50%) are immigrants or non-permanent residents.