In 1981, only 18% of Bangladeshi women aged 15 and over could read and write with understanding, against 39.7% of men. By 2022, UNESCO’s estimates put women’s adult literacy at 76.5% and men’s at 81.4%.
21.8 → 4.9 points
Gap between men’s and women’s adult literacy rates, 1981 to 2022.
Women’s literacy has risen by about 58.6 percentage points in four decades, faster than men’s 41.7. The gap was still 7.4 points in 2011 and has narrowed further since. The series is not smooth: women’s rate jumped from 62.2% in 2015 to 69.9% in 2016, and the earliest points are a decade apart, so year-to-year changes should be read with care. These are UNESCO estimates, not annual survey counts.
For policy, the remaining task is less about the gender gap than the overall level: roughly one adult in five still cannot read and write a short, simple statement. Adult literacy also says nothing about the quality of what children learn in school today, which is a separate measure.
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, via World Bank WDI (SE.ADT.LITR.FE.ZS, SE.ADT.LITR.MA.ZS). Latest available year: 2022.