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Seeks to examine the extent to which education systems around the world embrace vocational schooling and the degree to which exposure to vocational schooling differs by gender and race.

Uses distributional analysis applied to cross‐country data from Unesco to examine shares of secondary school students enrolled in the vocational track, by gender. Also uses descriptive statistics based on US Department of Education data to examine fields of study within the vocational track.

The emphasis on vocational education and access to different types of training across demographic groups varies considerably around the world. European countries in particular, long known for their heavy emphasis on specialized vocational schooling, have relatively high vocational school shares in secondary school. At the other end of the distribution, almost 30 countries in the sample, most of them low‐income, have vocational school shares below 4 percent. In the majority of countries, a higher share of male secondary school students enroll in the vocational track compared with female students. Latin American countries stand out for having a high female representation among vocational school students. In the USA, male students cluster in trade and industrial courses, while female students cluster in business preparation courses. Also, white students are relatively concentrated in the trades, black and Hispanic students cluster in business courses, and Asian students are concentrated in technical courses.

These stylized facts set the stage for new research on vocational education and for new policy initiatives that create new opportunities for specialization in vocational training.

This paper aims to examine the impact of vocational training on unemployed workers not typically studied: women enrolled in engineering or computer programming training and high school dropouts.

Using data from New Jersey's Individual Training Grant (ITG) program and a quasi‐experimental design, the study compares the ITG groups' re‐employment and wage recovery rates with a matched comparison group.

The article finds that women enrolled in the male‐dominated fields of engineering or computer programming experience re‐employment rates that are lower than or similar to those in the comparison group, but they experience higher wage recovery in 8th and 12th quarters after claiming unemployment insurance (UI). Hispanic high school dropouts experience both higher re‐employment and wage recovery rates than their comparison group, but the wage recovery advantage disappears when those enrolled in truck driving training are removed from the sample. Further, white and black high school dropouts experience no re‐employment or wage recovery advantage. For all participants, the study finds participants experience a higher re‐employment rate than the comparison group beginning in the fifth quarter and experience no wage recovery advantage.

To address the concern of selection bias, a difference‐in‐difference wage model controls for time‐variant differences in unobservables and an employment regression model controls for remaining differences in the matching variables.

These results suggest that training improves re‐employment chances and that type of training matters with respect to wage recovery. In this sample, those enrolled in truck driving training, engineering, and computer programming tended to experience higher wage recovery than their comparison group.

This paper examines the impact of vocational training on unemployed workers not typically studied.

The purpose of this article is to document the extent of girls' under‐representation in nontraditional high school career and technical education courses, examine the role of sex discrimination in these disparities, and identify legal remedies for addressing the problem.

This article uses high school CTE enrollment data from 12 states to document female students' under‐representation in nontraditional courses and uses wage data to show the negative implications for girls' future earnings. Drawing on the experiences of female students, this study explains how sex discrimination contributes to their low rates of participation in nontraditional training. The study then discusses how laws and regulations at the federal and state levels may provide means to address such discrimination.

Finds high levels of sex segregation in CTE course enrollment, with female students making up on average 15 percent of students in nontraditional courses and 87 percent in traditionally female fields. Substantial evidence of sex discrimination in CTE makes a strong case for its role in contributing to girls' low enrollment in nontraditional courses. Varied state laws can be utilized to address this underlying cause.

While much research has looked at girls in math and science, less attention has been paid to their participation in nontraditional CTE. This paper offers quantitative evidence of girls' under‐representation in such courses and qualitative evidence of the role sex discrimination plays. Offers a unique solution by showing how state laws can be used to address such discrimination and increase girls' participation in nontraditional training.

This paper aims to evaluate the variations in the entry and exit of women apprentices in the USA, overall and by race/ethnicity, over the 1995‐2003 period. Also aims to examine how women's representation among new apprentices and their attrition and retention rates vary with individual, training program, and occupational characteristics.

An individual‐level dataset from the US Department of Labor is used to estimate econometrically women's representation in apprenticeship programs and women's odds of completing programs.

Women's representation among new trainees is very low and deteriorating. The results confirm previous findings based on data for the early 1990s that program sponsorship has significant impact on women's representation and retention. Women have better chances of joining the high‐skill construction workforce if they enroll in union‐contractor joint programs. Joint programs feature higher shares of women in the incoming classes and higher odds of graduation in comparison with the unilateral contractor programs. While White women have higher completion rates than Latinas and Black women, the union impact on shares of enrollees is the largest for Black women and the lowest for White women.

The dataset is not nationally representative. It covers 31 states or about 65 percent of all apprentices.

Union sponsorship is necessary but not sufficient to enhance women's integration in the trades. Increasing participation of women in apprenticeship and the trades requires major changes in policies, priorities, and behavior of contactors, unions, and the government to actively recruit women and improve working conditions at the construction site.

This is the first systematic analysis of performance of women apprentices that utilizes the most recent data from the USA.

This study sets out to investigate the pattern of benefits from education along the earnings distribution and compares this pattern between general and vocational/technical education in Singapore, with a particular focus on male‐female differences.

Quantile regression methodology is used, which allows for estimates of education benefits that differentiate the contribution of the quantity and quality of education along the earnings distribution. The quantile regression estimates highlight where in the income/ability distribution the impact of education is more pronounced.

Finds that, while the pattern of returns to an additional year of education for general education follows that of other high income countries, exhibiting increasing returns to education as one goes from lower to higher income quantiles, the returns to vocational education exhibit much lower heterogeneity. Based on the findings, the vocational education system in Singapore has served women with secondary vocational qualifications particularly well. They earn more, have higher labor force participation, experience higher employment rates and are associated with a narrower gender earnings gap compared with women with general education. However, this is not the case for women with polytechnic qualifications, who earn much less than men with such qualifications.

The findings suggest that, by and large, Singapore's vocational education system at the secondary level has successfully addressed the needs of the industry and has contributed towards narrowing gender earnings differentials. It has also contributed towards less overall earnings inequality, because it results in less heterogeneity in the returns to education, compared with general education. However, the curricula of polytechnics need to be re‐examined to identify the cause of the sharply lower female benefits from this type of education.

The paper contributes to the empirical literature with its use of the quantile regression methodology in evaluating the benefits of vocational versus general education for men and women.