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Illiterate Young Women

Map No. 197

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This map shows the number of young women that would need to be educated to reach the same literacy rates as young men in each territory.

The biggest gaps between male and female literacy are in Southern Asia, Northern Africa and Southeastern Africa. In Pakistan, when the number of illiterate boys is subtracted from illiterate girls, the result is 2.6 million ‘extra’ girls who cannot read or write; that is 24% of women aged 15-24 there.

The most ‘extra’ female illiteracy in the Middle East is in Yemen; in Eastern Europe it is in Turkey; in Asia Pacific it is in Indonesia; in South America it is in Guatemala; and in North America it is in the United States.

"My dream now is to become a teacher and work here at the Kuchinerla School and help people in our villages understand the dangers of working in the cotton fields and the importance of girls’ education." Vijaya Lakshmi, 2006

Territory size is proportional to the number of illiterate females aged 15 to 24 years, minus the number of illiterate males of the same age in the same territory. Only territories with greater female illiteracy have an area.

• Open PDF poster, designed for printing. You need Acrobat Reader.
• View labelled territory map or population map for comparison
• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page