Research On Social Capital Impact On Female Postgraduate Employment From The Perspective Of Gender

With the popularization of higher education and expansion of postgraduate enrollment scale, the numbers of postgraduate students grow rapidly. In 2010, the number of female postgraduate exceeded the number of male postgraduate for the first time. Female postgraduate believed that master's degree could be an advantage in the job searching, actually, their employment situation is even worse than college graduates. The employment situation for female postgraduate has become increasingly severe because of the gender inequality and the imbalance between supply and demand. However we found out that some female postgraduates with a better social capital would be able to find an ideal job. Based on this realistic background, this research is looking forward to explore the social capital influence on female postgraduate employment, and how much on earth does the social capital effects in the female postgraduate employment.This research studied the relationship between the ascribed social capital and the achieved social capital. Fresh female postgraduate students from three universities in X city were taken as the research objects, and the data were collected through the questionnaire and case interview. The results showed that gender discrimination existed in most employment situation. Through the comparison of social capital in the postgraduates from city and postgraduates from village, we found out that the village female postgraduates had less ascribed social capital than urban female postgraduate, but there is no difference in achieved social capital. Wherever the female postgraduates come from, they pay more attention to accumulate their achieved social capital. The regression analysis by SPSS has shown that the family economic level in the ascribed social capital had significant effect on female postgraduates' employment. The better family conditions they have, the easier jobs they will find, and the higher expectations they will have. In the achieved social capital, it is easier to find job for female postgraduate who had rich social practice experience. It is easier to get a higher starting salary for female postgraduate who is the member of Communist Party of China. And the student cadres are more willing to work in big cities and have higher employment expectation. In the end, the research made a suggestion from four aspects to improve the female graduates' current employment status, which were society, school, family background and graduate themselves. This paper suggested that female postgraduate should improve their own quality firstly, pay attention to accumulate their social capital, and mobilize their own resources so as to make up the gender inequality in employment. Natural sex cannot be changed, but female graduate can make efforts to shape their social gender. Family background cannot be changed, but female postgraduates' own conditions can be improved by themselves in the future.