WORLD

The global gender gap in higher education flipped in 2001 — and the economies where men still out-enroll women now include Chad, Afghanistan, South Korea and Japan

Women out-enroll men in tertiary education in 130 of the 154 economies that filed a figure since 2020. The world went from 59 women per 100 men in 1970 to 112 in 2024 — and the 24 holdouts split into the poorest states and a handful of the richest.

Filed by the Claridas world pod · August 24, 2026

The Facts

The World Bank publishes a gender parity index (GPI) for tertiary enrollment — the ratio of women to men enrolled in higher education, drawn from UNESCO Institute for Statistics data (series SE.ENR.TERT.FM.ZS, last updated 2026-07-13). A GPI of 1.0 is parity; above 1.0, women out-enroll men. We read every value it holds. The World Bank's own world aggregate has already crossed. Global tertiary GPI stood at 0.589 in 1970 — 59 women enrolled for every 100 men — climbed past 1.0 in 2001 (1.003), and reached 1.122 in 2024: about 112 women per 100 men. UNESCO's first Higher Education Global Trends Report, released May 2026, puts the same 2024 figure at 114 per 100 from its own count. The single-vintage cross-section says the same thing. Of the 94 economies that filed a 2024 tertiary GPI, women were enrolled at least as often as men (GPI at or above 1.0) in 82; men led in 12. The median filer sat at 1.243 — women enrolled about 24% more than men. Widen to the latest figure each economy reported between 2020 and 2024, and the panel reaches 154 economies. Women out-enroll men in 130 of them; men lead in 24. The median is 1.25. Those 24 male-advantage holdouts do not share an income level. Twenty are low- or lower-middle-income — the deepest gaps in Afghanistan (0.381, 2020), Chad (0.394, 2020) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (0.592). But the list also carries three high-income economies — South Korea (0.891, 2024), Japan (0.974, 2023) and Liechtenstein (0.652, 2021) — and one upper-middle economy, war-strained Ukraine (0.854, 2024). At the other end, the widest female majorities span the income ladder just as unevenly: low-income Gambia tops the panel at 1.83 (2024), ahead of high-income Qatar (1.638) and a cluster of Caribbean and Pacific microstates.

The Analysis

The following is analysis, not fact. Read across the whole panel rather than the two or three countries a desk usually names, and the older picture — girls shut out of school — is, at the top of the education ladder, now the minority case. The reversal is not new: the World Bank's world aggregate crossed parity a generation ago, in 2001. It is no longer widening, though — the aggregate peaked at 1.130 in 2020 and has eased to 1.122 in 2024, so the story now is how broadly the reversal has spread across economies, not a still-growing global gap. In 130 of 154 recent filers, the under-enrolled sex in higher education is male. The non-obvious part is the shape of the exceptions. The 24 economies where men still out-enroll women are not a poverty list. They pair the poorest and most conflict-hit states with three of the world's richest economies — South Korea and Japan among them. A single number, GPI below 1.0, is doing very different work in Kabul and in Seoul: in the low-income holdouts overall tertiary enrollment is thin, so few women reach a university at all; in the high-income holdouts enrollment is near-universal for both sexes and men merely edge ahead. That the same statistic describes opposite situations is a reading we did not isolate mechanically — we did not model enrollment levels, fields of study, or competing predictors — it is a hypothesis the composition is consistent with, not a cause these counts establish. ^sspeculative Two cuts point the same way, which is worth stating because they weight differently. The world aggregate is enrollment-weighted, so large systems dominate it; the country median counts each economy once. Both clear 1.0 comfortably (1.122 and 1.25). The direction does not depend on which lens you pick.

Room for Disagreement

The strongest counter is that enrollment is not attainment, and neither is equality. Counting who sits in a lecture hall says nothing about who finishes, what they study, or what the degree earns. UNESCO's own 2026 report, in the same breath as the 114-per-100 figure, records that women remain a minority at doctoral level and hold only about a quarter of senior academic leadership roles. A tertiary GPI above 1.0 is fully compatible with women being under-represented in STEM fields, in research careers, and in pay. The number here measures one gate, not the whole track. A second caveat cuts at the extremes. A very high female GPI in some Gulf and Caribbean economies may partly reflect men *not* enrolling — leaving early for the labor market or migrating — rather than women surging ahead; the ratio alone cannot separate the two, and we did not model enrollment levels or male outflows to test it ^sspeculative. The same behavior can push a ratio well above or just below 1.0, so the tails of this panel are noisier than the median. Economies with small university systems (Liechtenstein, a microstate, at 0.652; Gambia, a small low-income filer, at 1.83) can swing year to year on small numbers; the robust finding is the direction and the median across 154 economies, not any single ranking. Third, the denominator is the World Bank's filer list, not the full universe of states — 154 of roughly 200 economies reported since 2020, and gross enrollment ratios carry their own measurement quirks (repeaters, late entrants). Every count above is scoped to the economies that filed.

The View From

From Seoul, a GPI below 1.0 need not read like the same number from N'Djamena. South Korea enrolls one of the world's highest shares of its young people in tertiary education, women included, so its 0.891 plausibly marks a near-parity gap inside near-universal enrollment, while Chad's 0.394 more likely sits atop a system where few women reach higher education at all — a contrast the GPI is consistent with but does not by itself establish, since we pulled no enrollment-level data ^sspeculative. One South Korean political debate even runs the *other* way: young men there have widely argued that mandatory conscription — a roughly two-year interruption women do not face — sets them back in study and the job market against women who graduate on schedule, a grievance prominent enough to shape the country's gender-split 2022 presidential vote (Korea Herald; Carnegie Endowment). The cross-country table flattens both into one column; the vantage from each capital is that the shared statistic hides opposite problems — one of exclusion, one of a race already run close.

Notable

UNESCO · Number of students in higher education more than doubled in 20 years, but inequalities remain — UNESCO's first Higher Education Global Trends Report (May 2026): 114 women per 100 men enrolled globally in 2024, parity reached in every region but sub-Saharan Africa — and women still a minority at doctoral level and in academic leadership.
World Bank Gender Data Portal · A tale of old and new gender gaps: tracing global trends in education — The World Bank's own narrative: at the tertiary level female enrollment exceeds male by more than 5 points in over 100 countries, even as older gaps persist lower down.
UNESCO IESALC · Shaping the future of higher education: launch of UNESCO's global trends report — The institutional launch write-up — 269 million students enrolled in 2024, more than double 20 years earlier, with the gender balance tipping female.
News Central Asia (nCa) · UNESCO: Number of students in higher education more than doubled in 20 years, but inequalities remain — External coverage of the same UNESCO report, from a region — Central and Southern Asia — the report singles out for moving from 68 women per 100 men in 2000 to parity in 2023.
The Korea Herald · Disaffected young men call for gender equality in conscription — Sources the viewFrom line on South Korea's conscription-and-gender debate — young men's grievance that mandatory military service (a roughly two-year interruption women do not face) disadvantages them. Establishes that the debate exists and its conscription rationale; it is not evidence about the enrollment GPI.
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace · The Fight Over Gender Equality in South Korea — Corroborates the gender-split politics behind the same debate, including its prominence in the 2022 presidential vote — the political dimension the viewFrom line reports, distinct from the tertiary-enrollment data.