The clustered bar chart delineates estimated illiteracy rates for men and women across six different world regions in the year 2000.
Overall, it is evident that female illiteracy, was higher than male illiteracy in all regions. The gap was especially large in less developed countries, such as South Asia and the Arab States, while developed countries showed almost no difference between genders.
In developed countries, the illiteracy rates were extremely low for both genders, around 1%. Similarly, Latin America/Caribbean and East Asia/Oceania showed only a small gender difference, with female rates just slightly higher. Male illiteracy in these regions stayed below 10%, while females were about 1-3% higher.
Conversely, Sub-Saharan Africa, Arab States, and South Asia had much higher illiteracy stages. In South Asia, female illiteracy reached nearly 50%, while males were around 30%. The Arab States had a similar pattern. Sub-Saharan Africa also showed a large gap, with about 30% of men and nearly 50% of women unable to do simple tasks as reading and writing.