The gender gap in education is one of the world’s oldest inequalities, and one of its most transformed.
In much of the world it has closed or even reversed, but in specific places girls remain systematically shut out.
The global average hides both stories.
TL;DR
- Women make up nearly two-thirds of the world’s 739 million illiterate adults, about 466 million people.
- At current rates, gender parity in adult literacy will not be reached until around 2065.
- Yet at the university level, women now outnumber men, with a tertiary enrollment ratio of 44% versus 38%.
The gender figures here come from UNESCO and the World Bank.
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A gap that has flipped in places
| wdt_ID | wdt_created_by | wdt_created_at | wdt_last_edited_by | wdt_last_edited_at | Global Measure | Approx. Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 09/08/2026 01:29 PM | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 09/08/2026 01:29 PM | Women's share of illiterate adults | 63% |
| 2 | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 09/08/2026 01:29 PM | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 09/08/2026 01:29 PM | Girls' share of out-of-school children | 48% |
| 3 | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 09/08/2026 01:29 PM | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 09/08/2026 01:29 PM | Tertiary enrollment, women | 44% |
| 4 | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 09/08/2026 01:29 PM | emmanuel-ashemiriogwa | 09/08/2026 01:29 PM | Tertiary enrollment, men | 38% |
Girls make up about 48% of out-of-school children, and the global gender gap in the out-of-school rate has largely closed, even as women remain the majority of illiterate adults, a legacy of past inequality among older generations.
Why the gap persists in some places but has reversed in others
The story splits in two.
Among older adults, women dominate the illiterate population because they were denied schooling decades ago.
Among the young, the gap has closed globally and even reversed at university. But averages hide extremes.
Large gender gaps persist in specific countries, with many more primary-age girls than boys out of school in places like Afghanistan, Niger, and the Central African Republic, where poverty, conflict, and discrimination combine.
In a few countries, the reverse is now true, with more boys than girls out of school.
ALSO READ: Does More Education Actually Mean Higher Earnings?
ELI5
For a long time, girls were much less likely to go to school than boys.
Today, in most of the world, that gap has closed, and in rich countries more women than men go to university.
But in some poor and conflict-hit countries, girls are still kept out of school.
Sources
