Girls perform better in education, boys more often self-supporting

Boys more often than girls get in contact with youth care and rehabilitation programmes and girls are doing better in education. More boys than girls attend special education and the school dropout rate is higher for boys. Generally, young women also achieve better results in higher education. A reverse situation occurs on the labour market. Young men are more often self-supporting and employed on a full-time basis and as a result they earn more than young women, as Statistics Netherlands (CBS) announced today.

Nearly 89 thousand underage people in youth care

On 1 January 2014, the population in the Netherlands included 2.5 million boys and 2.4 million girls under the age of 25. Nearly 89 thousand underage people (less than 3 percent) received one or more different types of youth care in 2013, because they faced problems in their teens and showed behavioural problems. Boys also more often participate in youth rehabilitation programmes than girls.

Young people relying on youth care by age, 2013

Girls outperform boys in secondary and higher education

More boys than girls require support in education. Nearly three times as many boys as girls attend special education schools. The largest gender difference is observed in education for children with severe educational and behavioural disorders (cluster 4).

Behavioural end educational problems occur more frequently among boys. As a result, boys are more likely to repeat a year at school or drop out. Last year, 1 in every 10 young men in the age category 18-24 did not have a starter qualification, versus nearly 7 percent of their female peers.

Based on the results of the Cito exam, boys and girls perform equally well in primary education. In secondary education, however, more girls than boys attend higher general secondary education (havo) or pre-university education (vwo). Subsequently, girls also constitute a majority in higher vocational education (hbo) and university (wo) and they also graduate faster.

Participation under-25s in higher vocational education and university, 1990/\'91 - 2014/\'15

More girls opt for scientific studies

Typically, young boys are better at arithmetic, while girls are better at languages. This phenomenon is corroborated by the Cito test results; boys perform better in arithmetic/maths and girls have better linguistic skills. During and after the secondary-school period, boys more often opt for science-related subjects. The interest in science has grown among girls in the Netherlands in recent years, but is still relatively low compared to other European countries.

More young men are working on a full-time basis and self-supporting

Adolescent women tend to comply more with the rules of society and live more traditional lives than their male counterparts. Young men tend to show more extravagant behaviour, but - after having graduated - they easily accommodate to the needs of society. Young men aged between 15 and 27 who no longer attend any form of education or training were almost as often employed as young women; 78 and 80 percent respectively in the first quarter of 2015.

Young men are working on a full-time basis nearly twice as often as young women: 71 versus 37 percent. This is one of the reasons that young men on average earn 21 thousand euros annually, as against 17 thousand euros for women. As a result, more young men than women are economically independent.

Differences between the number of full-timers and part-timers constitute the basis for the gender differences in career prospects; at management level, part-timers are rare. Full-time working mothers, on the other hand, almost as often hold management positions as full-time working fathers.

Working hours men and women (15-74 yrs), not attending any form of education or training, 1st quarter 2015