PhD Position: Gender Inequality in Dutch Secondary Education

Why do boys underperform in education? What is the role of the gender culture in secondary school? Does students’ socioeconomic and migrant background play a role? Does the school context matter? If you are eager to answer these questions during a four-year PhD project, check out this opportunity!

Why boys perform less well in education than girls in most Western countries is a hotly contended question among scientists, policymakers and educational professionals. Boys, for example, repeat grades, get suspended and drop out of school more often than girls. Achievement differences between girls and boys typically arise in secondary education where boys develop more anti-academic attitudes and behaviours and eventually receive lower grades than girls. Explaining what causes this inequality in attitudes, behaviour and achievement in secondary education is therefore a pressing issue.

This PhD project is part of a project entitled ‘Gender inequality in Dutch secondary education: how the peer and school context influence students' anti-academic attitudes, behaviour and grades’ funded by the Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO) within the framework of the Netherlands Cohort Study on Education (NCO). This project aims to provide new insights into the determinants of gender gaps in Dutch secondary education by quantitatively assessing the role of gender cultures in schools. To this end, the new round of the NCO will consist of an extensive survey data collection on gender cultures in Dutch secondary schools. This dataset will be linked to register data from Statistics Netherlands (CBS).

In the PhD project ’An intersectional and contextual perspective on gendered peer influence in secondary school’ you will specifically zoom in on variations in gendered peer influence among students from different socioeconomic and migration backgrounds and between schools. You will answer questions such as: Do gender gaps in attitudes, behaviour and achievement vary according to student background and school composition and quality? To what extent can variations be explained by gendered peer cultures? Are some students more susceptible to the gendered peer culture in school than others? You will answer these questions by analysing newly collected survey data, which you will link to CBS register data, using advanced statistical methods. The data collection will be executed by KBA in collaboration with NCO, but you will be involved in the process (e.g. development of questionnaires). You will present the results at scientific conferences and in peer-reviewed scientific journals. At the end of the project, you will help organise a workshop for teachers, school principals, curriculum developers and educational policymakers. Besides scientific research, you will spend 10% of your time on teaching within the Sociology programme at Radboud University.

You will work closely with Dr Margriet van Hek (Assistant Professor of Sociology, daily supervisor) and Gerbert Kraaykamp (Professor of Sociology, PhD supervisor) and Mark Levels (Professor of Sociology and Technology at Maastricht University, PhD supervisor). You will also collaborate with Mieke van Houtte (Professor of Sociology, Ghent University).

Would you like to learn more about what it’s like to pursue a PhD at Radboud University? Visit the page about working as a PhD candidate.

• We will give you a temporary employment contract (1.0 FTE) of 1.5 years, after which your performance will be evaluated. If the evaluation is positive, your contract will be extended by 2.5 years (4-year contract).
• You will receive a starting salary of €2,901 gross per month based on a 38-hour working week, which will increase to €3,707 in the fourth year (salary scale P)
• You will receive an 8% holiday allowance and an 8,3% end-of-year bonus.
• You will receive extra days off. With full-time employment, you can choose between 30 or 41 days of annual leave instead of the statutory 20.

Work and science require good employment practices. This is reflected in Radboud University's primary and secondary employment conditions. You can make arrangements for the best possible work-life balance with flexible working hours, various leave arrangements and working from home. You are also able to compose part of your employment conditions yourself, for example, exchange income for extra leave days and receive a reimbursement for your sports subscription. And of course, we offer a good pension plan. You are given plenty of room and responsibility to develop your talents and realise your ambitions. Therefore, we provide various training and development schemes.

You will be embedded in the Sociology department of the Faculty of Social Sciences. The central research themes of the Sociology department are inequality; family and social relations; and processes of inclusion and exclusion. About 25 researchers work at the department and the atmosphere is informal and supportive. You will receive your PhD training at the renowned ICS graduate school together with fellow PhD candidates from Utrecht, Groningen, Amsterdam and Nijmegen.

The research in this position will align with the research on ‘changing inequalities’ of the Radboud Social Cultural Research (RSCR) institute. RSCR is a research institute at the Faculty of Social Sciences and consists of the groups of Sociology, Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies, and Gender and Diversity Studies. The overall aim of RSCR is to improve our understanding of the processes leading to inequalities in various societies by investigating the societal phenomena of social inequality and inclusion.

You can apply only via the button below. Address your letter of application to Margriet van Hek. In the application form, you will find which documents you need to include with your application.

The first interviews will take place on Monday 26 May. You will preferably start your employment on 1 September 2025.

We can imagine you're curious about our application procedure. It describes what you can expect during the application procedure and how we handle your personal data and internal and external candidates. If you wish to apply for a non-scientific position with a non-EU nationality, please take notice of the following information.