Summary

GENDER AND EFA 2000-2015:
achievements and challenges
The vision agreed upon at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000 was clear and
transformational: long-standing gender bias and discrimination undermine the achievement of
Education for All (EFA). Until all girls and women exercise their right to education and literacy,
progress in achieving EFA will be stymied, and a dynamic source of development and empowerment
will be squandered. Fifteen years later, the road to achieving gender parity and reducing all forms of
gender inequalities in education continues to be long and twisting.
This publication by the EFA Global Monitoring Report provides detailed evidence of how much has
been achieved in the past 15 years but also where considerable – some quite intractable – challenges
remain. It highlights notable progress in gender parity in primary and secondary education,
particularly in South and West Asia, while underscoring the persistent barriers to achieving gender
equality in education. The lack of progress in literacy among adult women is especially stark: in
2015 an estimated 481 million women, 15 years and over, lack basic literacy skills, 64% of the total
number of those who are illiterate, a percentage virtually unchanged since 2000.
This report describes an array of country efforts, some quite effective, to achieve and go beyond
gender parity in education. Many of these policies and programmes focus on the immediate school
environment in which girls learn. Others focus on the informal and formal laws, social norms
and practices that deny girls their right of access to, and completion of, a full cycle of quality
basic education. The analyses and key messages in Gender and EFA 2000–2015: Achievements and
Challenges deserve careful scrutiny as the world embarks on a universal, integrated and even more
ambitious sustainable development agenda in the years to come.
The EFA Global Monitoring Report is an editorially independent, evidence-based publication that
serves as an indispensable tool for governments, researchers, education and development
specialists, media and students. It has assessed education progress in some 200 countries
and territories on an almost annual basis since 2002. This work will continue, throughout the
implementation of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda, as the Global Education
Monitoring Report.
In the rural areas, early marriage and other
forms of discrimination like sending girls to
learn a trade continue to put pressure on girl
child education. While the boys in the village
can easily combine herding and farming with
school, the girls on the other hand have to be
attending to their trade all day all year round.
– Daniel, teacher in Nigeria
One of the good changes that the education sector
has seen in the last 14 years is that girls are
now generally encouraged to go to schools; although
in some of the rural areas of the country,
things can be further improved in this regard.
– Abdullah, teacher in Pakistan
Since 2000 it is noticeable in the classroom
that the number of girls is becoming more and
more important than the boys, and this even
at the university level. Women are being more
and more socially considered, more and more
politically given responsibilities and this helps
to modify the negative sociocultural complexes
of inferiority.
– Hassana, teacher in Cameroon
There are no more courses which seem to
be designated for males or females only. For
example, we now have a lot of males taking
nursing or midwifery as a profession.
– Eunice, teacher in Botswana
UNESCO
Publishing
United Nations
Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization
www.unesco.org/publishing
www.unesco.org/gemreport