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The article provides an overview of the main theoretical approaches to research on educational choices and anticipated labour-market opportunities from a gender perspective. It then presents the results of three quantitative analyses of secondary data. The objective is to help facilitate a complex understanding of the mechanisms of the reproduction of gendered social
structures. The genderedness of the social institutions in the education system and the labour market in relation to the socialising trends in the family is described in three parts: 1) gender segregation in employment in the context of segregation in education – the author shows that the horizontal dimension of these social institutions plays a more signifi cant role than the vertical dimension; 2) the factors that condition girls' and boys' educational aspirations and choice of schools – the author demonstrates how secondary school choices are gendered (though the analysis did not reveal the differences between the factors that infl uence girls' and boys' aspirations); 3) the factors that condition parents' educational and class aspirations for their sons and daughters – the author uncovers several aspects of the socialising effect of the reproduction of the two traditional career trajectories based on gender. In conclusion, the article answers the question of how structurally gendered expectations cohere with individual career trajectories, and based on the three analyses formulates questions for further research and offers a revised theoretical conceptualisation of gender as an analytical category.