Global adult literacy rate 2000-2020, by gender

There is a gender gap in the global literacy rate. Although literacy rates have generally increased worldwide for both men and women, males are on average more literate than females. As of 2020, about 90 percent of men and a little over 83 percent of women in the world were literate. Adult literacy rate is defined as the percentage of people aged 15 years and above who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life.

Youth literacy rate

Not only does the literacy gender gap concern adults, it also exists among the world’s younger generations aged 15 to 24. Despite an overall increase in literacy, young men are still more literate than young women. In fact, the global youth literacy rate as gender parity index was 0.98 as of 2020, indicating that young women are not yet as literate as young men.

Gender pay gap

Gender gaps occur in many different spheres of global society. One such issue concerns salary gender gaps in the professional life. Regarding the controlled gender pay gap, which measures the median salary for men and women with the same job and qualifications, women still earned less than men as of 2021. The difference was even bigger when measuring the median salary for all men and women. However, not everyone worries about gender pay gaps. According to a survey from 2021, 54 percent of the female respondents deemed the gender pay gap a real problem, compared to 45 percent of the male respondents.