In a classroom in Kathmandu, 14-year-old Anjali beams as she solves a math problem on the blackboard—just one of millions of girls now in school across the globe where, not long ago, they would have been absent. Around the world, girls and boys are now enrolled in equal numbers from pre-primary to secondary school, a milestone decades in the making. This progress is no accident. Since 1990, Nepal has closed a 33-percentage-point gender gap in lower secondary school completion. In Cambodia, girls have gone from trailing boys in primary completion by 22 points in 1981 to leading them by 11 points in 2024. Saudi Arabia has cut its tertiary education gender gap by three quarters since 2006. These gains reflect a global shift—yet deep inequalities still run beneath the surface.
While enrollment looks balanced on paper, the reality for many girls is far more complex. In rural India, only 59 girls complete upper secondary school for every 100 boys. In Angola’s poorest communities, that number drops to just 30. The reasons are layered: poverty, stigma, unsafe travel, and lack of childcare. But one of the most persistent barriers is early marriage. Though the global rate of child marriage has fallen from 25% in 2000 to 18% in 2025, it remains shockingly high in parts of the world—25% in Central and Southern Asia, and 31% in sub-Saharan Africa. When girls marry young, their education often ends. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 6 million girls aged 10 to 19 who are pregnant or already mothers were out of school in 2024. Fewer than 5% of them return.
Still, there is reason for hope. Countries like Sierra Leone, Togo, and the Central African Republic have lifted bans that once kept pregnant and married girls out of classrooms. Nine in ten countries in Eastern and Southern Africa now have policies allowing young mothers to continue their education. UNESCO’s Our Rights, Our Lives, Our Future programme has reached 35 countries, expanding access to sexuality education and helping girls make informed choices. In Afghanistan, where 2.4 million girls are still denied formal education, UNESCO supports community-based learning and literacy programmes to keep their futures alive.
Yet laws alone are not enough. Even where girls have the right to return to school, they may lack transport, face stigma, or find no safe toilets or childcare. Only 35% of countries explicitly protect the right to education for pregnant and parenting girls in law, despite 58% guaranteeing gender equality in education overall. Change is coming, but it must be practical, not just legal. As UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany says, "We are mobilized with governments and partners around the world to protect girls’ right to education." From Kathmandu to Kigali, that promise is slowly becoming real—one girl, one classroom, one future at a time.