Gender imbalance in the Quebec education system

Abstract

This short descriptive paper uses an administrative dataset from the Québec ministry of education to study gender sorting into public and private schools in Québec. This issue is important to understand factors contributing to the education gender gap. It shows that normal public high schools in Québec have a 4 to 5 percentage point larger share of male students relative to private high schools. Moreover, normal public high schools also have a greater share of male students relative to public high schools with special streams like the international or arts programs. These results suggest that female students have access to higher quality schooling than male students.