ISLAMABAD: The Global Edu­cation Monitoring Report, 2022, released by Unesco on Wednesday estimates that globally 771 million adults lacked basic literacy skills in 2020, among which 98 million were aged 15 to 24.

The annual gender report of the UN’s specialised agency says females accounted for 63 per cent of all adult illiterates and 55 per cent of young illiterates. Among adults, 83 per cent of women and 90 per cent of men were literate, a gap of 7 percentage points, whereas the gender gap was only two percentage points among youth.

The gender gap in adult literacy is largest in central and southern Asia (15 points), followed by sub-Saharan Africa (13 points). Over the past 20 years, gender gaps in enrolment and attendance have been declining.

Globally, the male-female gender gap in out-of-school rates is close to zero in all three levels of education, although regions have progressed at different rates. There was rapid progress towards parity in primary and lower secondary education in Central and Southern Asia during the 2000s, while progress continued among youth of upper secondary school age in the past decade.

In Pakistan, only one girl achieves the top proficiency level for every three boys but the absolute gap between them is only 0.1 percentage points because overall performance levels are low.

Gender gaps in enrolment and attendance have been declining over the past 20 years with less than one percentage point gender gap remaining in all three levels of education. New analysis shows that, globally, at each education level, females enjoy an advantage of two percentage points in rates for those completing on time.

In Pakistan, 56 per cent of adults strongly agreed that care and education of young children have traditionally been seen as the responsibility of the family and especially women, under the strong influence of unequal norms, standards and expectations about gender roles.

Published in Dawn, April 28th, 2022