submitted by Pam Perraud, AAWE Paris & FAUSA
Since 2016, UNESCO has published the Global Education Monitoring Report - Gender Report. This year’s report explores 25 years worth of efforts for gender equality in education. From the Foreword:
Those working in the education sector know that the way we respond to the COVID-19 pandemic today will have implications for years – and potentially decades – to come. COVID-19 related school closures are posing huge challenges for education systems. Even more concerning, the pandemic is aggravating chronic difficulties already faced by the most marginalized – especially girls. Girls are more likely to experience gender discrimination in the allocation of household chores, gender-based violence, early and forced marriage, and early and unintended pregnancy. As a result of the extra challenges caused by the pandemic, an additional 11 million girls and young women may never return to school. For this reason, the timing of this 2020 GEM Gender Report is critical. It looks at progress made since 1995, when the international community made a landmark commitment to advancing women’s rights by adopting the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. This progress is real: over the past 25 years, 180 million more girls have enrolled in primary and secondary school, and girls’ learning outcomes have improved. Female enrolment in tertiary education has risen three times. However, we are still a long way from fulfilling our commitments to gender equality. The Report also shows where progress has faltered, and where difficulties risk being exacerbated by the current health crisis. Three-quarters of primary-school-age children who may never set foot in school are girls. Women still account for almost two-thirds of all adults unable to read – 515 million of them lack basic reading skills. Today, it is a global failure that only 2% of the poorest rural females in low-income countries complete upper secondary school. The message is clear: much work remains to be done to achieve gender equality in education. We must not let the pandemic reverse our efforts, or wipe out the progress made since 1995.
To read about the past successes and ongoing challenges, click HERE to access the full report.
This publication is available in Open Access under the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/). By using the content of this publication, the users accept to be bound by the terms of use of the UNESCO Open Access Repository. UNESCO. 2020. Global Education Monitoring Report – Gender Report: A new generation: 25 years of efforts for gender equality in education. Paris, UNESCO.
