ABSTRACT
Comparisons of education and employment in France and Germany repeatedly point to the positive aspects of German-style schooling, known as the "dual" system. In both countries, and in fact throughout the industrialised world, women's educational credentials have tended to catch up with or even surpass men's. They seek to capitalise cm their schooling, however, in a labour market characterised by increasing difficulty in finding one's place and keeping it. Women's relationship to employment and education has changed in Germany as well. In both countries, inequalities between the sexes within the educational system, whether general or technical and vocational, have tended to decline sharply since the post-war period. In Germany, the improvement in girls' educational levels has been particularly marked in vocational and technical training. Women's education has soared, but they nonetheless continue to be under-represented in the natural sciences, and even more so in industrial technology.
