While the world has achieved progress towards gender equality  and women’s empowerment under the Millennium Development Goals (including equal access to primary education between girls and boys), women and girls continue to suffer discrimination and violence in every part of the world.

Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.

Providing women and girls with equal access to education, health care, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes will fuel sustainable economies and benefit societies and humanity at large.

• About  two thirds of countries in the developing regions have achieved gender parity in primary education

• In Southern Asia, only 74 girls were enrolled in primary school for every 100 boys in 1990. By 2012, the enrollment ratios were the same for girls as for boys.

• In sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania and Western Asia, girls still face barriers to entering both primary and secondary school.

• Women in Northern Africa hold less than one in five paid jobs in the non-agricultural sector. The proportion of women in paid employment outside the agriculture sector has increased from 35 per cent in 1990 to 41 per cent in 2015

• In 46 countries, women now hold more than 30 per cent of seats in national parliament in at least one chamber.

Learn more at: http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/gender-equality/