Statistics are human beings with the tears wiped away.
⏤ Paul Brodeur
Statistics for
International
Day of the girl
Girls (aged 1-16 years) born today can expect to live nearly
eight more years
on average, than girls born in 1995
There are more than
1 billion girls
under 18 in the world
Education
Every additional year of primary school increases girls' eventual wages by 10-20%. It also encourages them to marry later and have fewer children, and leaves them less vulnerable to violence
Worldwide, the rate of enrolment for primary and secondary school has almost reached gender parity
90% boys 89% girls
Two-thirds of all countries have reached gender parity in primary school enrolment
Globally, in 1998, there were more girls of secondary school age out of school than boys (143 million girls compared to 127 million boys). Today, the opposite is true. There are 97 million girls of secondary school age out of school compared to 102 million boys.
For every dollar invested into girls’ rights and education, developing nations could see a return of $2.80
Nearly 2 in 3 girls are enrolled in secondary school compared to 1 in 2 in 1998
The number of girls aged 15-24 years who are illiterate declined from 100 million to 56 million between 1995 and 2018, but 1 in 10 girls remain illiterate today
Nearly 1 in 4 girls aged 15-19 years is neither employed nor in education or training, compared to 1 in 10 boys of the same age
The number of girls out of school worldwide
dropped by 79 million
between 1998 and 2018
Child marriage, sexual violence, reproductive health and FGM
12 million girls
are forced to marry as children every year
Globally, around 1 in 5 adolescent girls have experienced recent intimate partner violence
In most developing countries, less than 50% of married girls aged 15-19 make informed decisions regarding sexual relations, contraceptive use and reproductive health
In more than one third of countries, at least 5% of girls reported experiences of sexual violence in childhood
Over the past decade, the proportion of girls aged 15-19 who have undergone female genital mutilation
has decreased
from 41% to 34%
Sport
Girls are still significantly underrepresented
in most community-club level sports, meaning they are missing out on the benefits that participation in sports provide, including improvements in health and wellbeing
Only 22% of registered football players at community club level are female
Boys are almost
3x more likely
than girls to have engaged in 60 minutes of exercise every day
Other
Of the 690 million people who are food insecure in the world right now, 60% are women and girls
Globally, girls aged 5-14 spend 16 million more hours every day on unpaid care and domestic work than boys of the same age
Almost half of primary schools in least developed countries lack single-sex toilets – an important factor in girls’ attendance – and more than two thirds are without electricity
At least 60% of countries still discriminate against daughters’ rights to inherit land and non-land assets in either law or practice
Sources: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022). World Population Prospects 2022, Online Edition; UNICEF; UN Women: Rural Women and the Millennium Development Goals; World Bank; Plan International and Citi’s Global Insights team (WEF); World Food Program USA, Football Victoria
