“Being a girl still remains a powerful cause for exclusion despite universally enshrined human rights, constitutional guarantees and political declarations. Although progress towards gender parity has been particularly rapid over the past decade, girls are more likely to be out of primary school than boys – a blatant denial of their right to education. At the secondary level, when girls reach the vulnerable age of adolescence, their participation declines in certain parts of the world due to unsafe learning environments and social demands. The Digest finds that 60% of countries have not reached gender parity in primary and secondary education – a goal that had been set for 2005 at both the World Education Forum and the Millennium Summit at the turn of the century. The share of illiterate women has not changed over the past twenty years: women still represented two-thirds of the world’s 759 million illiterates in 2008.” (from the preface by UNESCO Secretary-General Irina Bokova).

This report focuses on gender and education to mark the 15th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, and explores patterns and trends in gender and schooling across the world. The report presents both global and country-level data and analysis, explores issues and themes, and presents some of the main policy issues.