Through an in-depth analysis of the 'massification generation', where young people from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds are accessing higher education, often for the first time in their families and communities, readers are encouraged to apply a lens of social disadvantage and gender, and to recognise the norms and transgressions of femininity and masculinity in relation to higher education access and choice.

With global implications for the ways in which gender is analysed and framed in widening participation research and policy, this is the ideal book for scholars, students and policy makers working on higher education, as well as researchers and NGOs specialising in gender, school-to-higher education transitions, international development, sociology and area studies.