Exploring the Gender Gap in Erasmus Student Mobility Flows

The present contribution aims at exploring the Erasmus student mobility flows across European countries given the relevant role played by the internationalisation process in the implementation of university policies. In particular, the main purpose is to confirm the presence of a gender gap across countries in the Erasmus programme according to the related literature. Mobility data and socio-demographic indicators are collected from the European Union Open Data Portal and the Eurostat website. Information on student flows are then considered to define network data structures in which the nodes are the countries and the incoming and outgoing links represent the number of students exchanged between countries. Results show that the number of females involved in Erasmus programme is greater than the number of males, even if the position of countries in terms of centrality scores in the network structure remains similar.