Summary

GENDER SUMMARY
EDUCATION FOR ALL GLOBAL MONITORING REPORT 2015
Figure 15: Girls in Pakistan generally perform worse than boys in mathematics
and reading
Gender gap in two learning indicators, grade 5 students and children aged 10–12 years,
rural Pakistan, 2014
Male-female gap (percentage points)
20
15
10
5
0
-5
-10
FATA
Balochistan
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Sindh
Mathematics
Gilgit-Baltistan
Boys perform better than girls
Girls perform better than boys
Punjab
Azad Jammu and Kashmir
FATA
Balochistan
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Sindh
Reading
Grade 5
10–12 year olds
Gilgit-Baltistan
Punjab
Azad Jammu and Kashmir
Youth literacy rates are higher than literacy rates
among adults overall, which reflects recent gains
in access to primary and secondary level education.
The most up-to-date global youth literacy rate,
estimated in 2012, stands at 89%. By 2015 in South
and West Asia, the female youth literacy rate is
projected to be 85% compared with 90% for males –
a dramatic increase from 66% in 2000 and just
5 percentage points short of the global average.
Strong progress and a reduction in the gender gap
have also been seen in the Arab States, with the
female youth literacy rate projected to reach 89% by
2015 compared with 94% for males. Progress has
been much slower in sub-Saharan Africa, where
only 69% of female youth are expected to be literate
in 2015, an increase of just 11 percentage points
since 1990 (Figure 17).
Notes: The indicator in mathematics is the percentage of children who could do a division; the indicator in reading
is the percentage of children who could read a story in Urdu, Sindhi or Pashto. Both indicators have been calculated
over two groups: (i) all students who were in grade 5 and (ii) all children aged 10–12 years.
Source: ASER Pakistan team calculations based on the 2014 ASER survey.
worldwide since 2000, which is well short of the
50% target set at Dakar, and with no change in the
difference between males and females.
Progress has been uneven in the regions where
women were lagging furthest behind. There was
fast progress in the Arab States during the 2000s, as
the female adult literacy rate increased from 56% in
2000 to 69% in 2010, while the gender parity index
for literate women relative to men increased from
0.73 to 0.81. However, this progress is expected to
have slowed down by 2015 (Figure 16). Sub-Saharan
Africa was the region with the second lowest female
literacy rate in 2010 – just 50% – and projected
to reach 55% in 2015, when it was also projected
that far fewer women would be literate: 78 women
for every 100 men. South and West Asia remains
the region with the biggest gender disparity, even
though its female adult literacy rate is projected
to have exceeded that of sub-Saharan Africa. The
region’s adult female literacy rate increased from
47% in 2000 to 52% in 2010 and is expected to
reach 60% by 2015, when the gender parity index is
projected to be 0.76.
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