That some schools and universities produce a disproportionate number of successful professionals is well established. Nonetheless, research from the University of Oxford showing that alumni from 12 top private girls’ schools are 30 times more likely to scale the heights of British society than their peers at other schools is still shocking.
The researchers examined the influence of 12 of the most elite girls’ schools, both in the past and the present. The schools were selected based on the high success they had in helping pupils advance to Oxford or Cambridge. The researchers also examined the wider network of over 200 schools that are members of the Girls’ Schools Association.
Old girls network
The results suggest that, just as there is an “old boys network”, there are also similar benefits from attending the right girls’ schools, with those alumni from elite schools propelled into elite positions, albeit at a lesser velocity than their counterparts at elite boys’ schools.
“It is fascinating to view the shifting dynamics through the decades that impacted so profoundly on elite women, such as those experienced by the cohorts of 1940s and ’50s, who represented something of a transition generation,” the researchers explain. “But what is also clear is that, unlike men, over the last century, women have required more than simply access to the best education to achieve elite occupational success.”
The analysis also shows that half of the women in Who’s Who, who emanated from the elite girls’ school were also Oxbridge graduates. These women were also more likely to have direct links, often spouses, with others in Who’s Who.
“Here, in a context of entrenched masculine domination and powerful institutional and cultural barriers to occupational progress, women often relied on male partners to facilitate access to elite positions,” the researchers explain.
“These results illustrate that elite girls’ schools are also important engines of inequality. That certain old girls are 20 times more likely to reach an elite position than other women surely makes a mockery of the notion that equality of opportunity exists in contemporary Britain.”
