★Registration has been closed.

We are pleased to announce that an open seminar will be held as follows:

■Date
14:30–16:00 Thursday, 12 December 2024 (JST)

■Theme
The Role of Imagined Futures in Gendered Educational Trajectories: Adolescents’ Expectations and Uncertainty in Japanese Selective High Schools

■Venue
Hybrid (In-Person & Online)
* Maximum Capacity
a. In-Person: 15 people　 Hiroshima Office Centre
b. Online (zoom): Unlimited

■Language
Japanese

■MC
FAN, Yizhou (Hiroshima University)

■Lecturer
UCHIKOSHI, Fumiya (Harvard University)

■Abstract
In Japan, despite women’s improved access to higher education, still only one in five applicants to the nation’s top university are women, which is extremely lower than the female share in selective institutions in other wealthier countries. In this study, I focus on the role of high school students’ “imagined futures” in the context of highly uncertain admission and diversified higher education characterized by the expansion in less-selective institutions and vocational curricular programs, to provide explanations for the underrepresentation of women in Japanese selective universities. Specifically, I draw the data from qualitative interviews with high school seniors and teachers in selective high schools where almost everyone goes to college. In contrast to the expectation that students in these selective high schools are homogeneous in terms of meritocratic aspirations, I found significant gender differences in “aiming high.” I also found that the gender gap in aspirations to selective colleges is related to gendered imagined futures. Specifically, female students, who are more likely to be clear about their future career plans and expect career interruptions due to family events, tend to think about their educational choice based on narrowly defined occupational plans and consider vocational education and marketable skills more than other criteria (e.g., selectivity or prestige) in their school selection processes. By contrast, male students’ imagined futures are characterized by what Johnson-Hanks (2005) called “judicious opportunism,” wherein they tend to be less clear about their future career pathways and possess a belief that the prestige of the school they will eventually attend affects their options when they graduate and enter the labor market. I discuss cultural, demographic, and institutional sources that maintain and exacerbate the gender divergence in planned educational trajectories by narrowing the universe of possible futures available for women. By doing so, this study provides theoretical insights into how gendered imagined futures and macro-level contexts combine to allocate men and women with similar academic potential into different educational and occupational trajectories, with implications for inequality in higher education in other sociocultural contexts.

■Note
・Participation fee is free.
・Registration is open noon on Wednesday, 12 December 2024 (JST).
・Internet access and a camera/microphone device required to participate online.
・Use your full name as your personal meeting ID when you enter the meeting room. If you do not, you may not be allowed to enter the meeting room.
・Recording/screenshots not allowed.
・The meeting URL will be emailed to you separately by the day before the meeting. If you do not receive the e-mail, please contact us at k-kokyo(at)office.hiroshima-u.ac.jp
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