Our World
in Data
Oxford Martin School logoUniversity of Oxford logoGlobal Change Data Lab logo
Data

Share of primary school teachers who are women

See all data and research on:
Global Education

What you should know about this indicator

  • Teachers play a central role in shaping learning environments — this indicator shows what share of the teaching workforce in primary education is made up of women.
  • It captures the percentage of teachers in primary education who are female, calculated by dividing the number of female teachers by the total number of teachers (male and female) at the primary level and multiplying by 100.
  • A value close to 50% indicates gender parity in the primary teaching workforce. Higher values suggest that women are more strongly represented, while lower values may signal barriers to their participation in teaching.
  • The data come from administrative records, typically based on school censuses or national education staff registries that report the number of teachers by sex and education level.
  • This indicator helps assess the gender balance in the teaching profession and may highlight areas where there is a need for policy action or incentives to support women’s participation in teaching.
  • It is disaggregated by level of education and may be further refined by programme type, grade, or institutional setting.
  • Where possible, part-time teaching staff should be converted to full-time equivalent (FTE) positions to ensure consistent comparison across different types of employment contracts.
  • While this indicator provides insight into gender representation, it does not measure teacher qualifications, performance, or the quality of teaching.
  • Limitations may arise if part-time staff are not converted to FTE, or if the data exclude private or informal education institutions. Consistency in reporting between male and female teacher counts is also essential.
  • Despite these challenges, the percentage of female teachers in primary education is a key measure of gender representation in the education workforce and can support broader efforts toward inclusive and equitable education systems.

Number of female teachers at the primary level expressed as a percentage of the total number of teachers (male and female) at the primary level in a given school year. Teachers are persons employed full time or part time in an official capacity to guide and direct the learning experience of pupils and students, irrespective of their qualifications or the delivery mechanism, i.e. face-to-face and/or at a distance. This definition excludes educational personnel who have no active teaching duties (e.g. headmasters, headmistresses or principals who do not teach) and persons who work occasionally or in a voluntary capacity in educational institutions.

Share of primary school teachers who are women
Percentage of female teachers among all teachers at the education level during a given school year.
Source
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 1, 2025
Next expected update
May 2026
Date range
1970–2024
Unit
%

Explore charts that include this data

Share of teachers who are female in primary vs. tertiary education

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is the official and trusted source of internationally-comparable data on education, science, culture and communication. As the official statistical agency of UNESCO, the UIS produces a wide range of state-of-the-art databases to fuel the policies and investments needed to transform lives and propel the world towards its development goals. The UIS provides free access to data for all UNESCO countries and regional groupings from 1970 to the most recent year available.

Retrieved on
May 1, 2025
Retrieved from
https://databrowser.uis.unesco.org/resources/bulk
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), Education, https://uis.unesco.org/bdds, 2025

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of primary school teachers who are women”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska, Natasha Ahuja, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, and Max Roser (2023) - “Global Education”. Data adapted from UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-primary-school-teachers-who-are-female [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – processed by Our World in Data. “Share of primary school teachers who are women” [dataset]. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) - Education” [original data]. Retrieved May 23, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-primary-school-teachers-who-are-female