[From the chapter Tyranny of ignorance] — Two thirds of adult illiterates are women.

UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics estimates that at least 739 million adults worldwide cannot read or write. Roughly two out of three are women, a ratio that has proved stubborn even as overall literacy has climbed steeply, from 68 per cent of the world’s population in 1979 to more than 86 per cent today.

The organization frames literacy as more than reading, writing and counting: a continuum of skills running through a person’s whole life, now inseparable from digital and media competence. Its work on the gender gap runs through the Global Partnership for Women and Girls Education and the Global Alliance for Literacy, which targets countries where adult literacy sits below 50 per cent.

Source: UNESCO, What you need to know about literacy
Figures as of March 2026; UNESCO updates this page periodically.