The illiteracy rate among Egyptian women has declined over the past decade from 37.3 percent in 2006 to 30.8 percent in 2017, Egypt’s official statistics authority revealed in a report Wednesday.
Women constitute to about 49 percent of Egypt’s 104-million population.
“Elementary-school dropout rate among women decreased from 41.9 percent in 2006 to 22.4 percent in 2017,” said the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) in the report.
“There is a noticeable improvement in the illiteracy rate among females compared to that of males in the period between 2006 to 2017,” it added.
The report emphasized that highly educated women, particularly university graduates, increased from 7.9 percent to 10.8 percent over the past decade.
The CAPMAS report noted that 89.5 percent of Egyptian children are enrolled at schools while 10 percent did not join or dropped out for various reasons including the desire of the family or the child, the family’s financial conditions or the remoteness of schools.
Generally, illiteracy in the most populous Arab state declined from 29.7 percent in 2006 to 25.8 percent in 2017 according to a previous CAPMAS report.
