Access to Education by Gender and Region

Global data compiled by UNESCO's Institute for Statistics show that the gender gap in primary school enrollment has narrowed dramatically since 1990: the global gender parity index (GPI) for primary education — the ratio of girls' to boys' gross enrollment — sat close to 1.00 by the 2010s, meaning that, in aggregate, girls and boys now enroll in primary school at almost identical rates worldwide. This global convergence, however, conceals substantial regional and country-level exceptions where a meaningful gender gap in access persists, and it also conceals a phenomenon that has emerged strongly in the opposite direction in some regions: at the secondary and especially tertiary level in Latin America, the Caribbean, and increasingly parts of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, girls and young women now outnumber boys and young men in enrollment, a reversal UNESCO's Global Education Monitoring Report has documented since the 2010s and attributes partly to higher male dropout linked to early labor-market entry.