Giving Compass' Take:

• Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina share data that shows that the global gender gap in education is shrinking and indications are that it will continue to decrease. 

• How can funders work to build the momentum for gender parity in education? 

• Learn why girls are often left behind in education. 

There is generally an upward trend in the gender ratios across all regions – this implies that gender gaps in educational attainment have been going down in the long run. In fact, Latin America and Eastern Europe caught up with the group of ‘advanced economies’ in the 1980s, and the gender gaps in these regions have already been closed almost completely (i.e. the gender ratios approximate the 100% benchmark for education gender parity).

Further reductions in education inequality are still to be expected within developing countries; and if the expansion of global education can be continued, we can speed up this important process of global convergence.

It can be seen that as inequality is falling over time, the level of inequality is higher for older generations than it is for younger generations. We can also see that in the period 1960-2010, education inequality went down every year, for all age groups and in all world regions.

Have gains from historical education expansion fully materialized? The breakdown by age gives us a view into the future: as the inequality is lower among today’s younger generations, we can expect the decline of inequality to continue in the future.

Read the full article on gender gaps in global education by Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina at Our World in Data.