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Share of secondary school teachers who are women

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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 secondary education is made up of women.
  • It captures the percentage of teachers at the secondary level (including both lower and upper secondary) who are female, calculated by dividing the number of female teachers by the total number of teachers and multiplying by 100.
  • A value close to 50% indicates gender parity, while values above or below that threshold reflect gender imbalances in the secondary teaching profession.
  • The data come from school censuses or education management systems that record teaching staff by sex and education level.
  • This indicator is useful for monitoring gender equality in the teaching profession and for identifying areas where women may face barriers to participating in education roles beyond the primary level.
  • The indicator can be disaggregated further by grade, subject area, or full-time/part-time status, where data allow.
  • When feasible, part-time teachers should be converted to full-time equivalents (FTE) to ensure comparability.
  • While this indicator reflects gender representation, it does not provide information on teacher qualifications, working conditions, or the quality of instruction.
  • Nonetheless, the share of secondary school teachers who are women remains an important measure for assessing inclusion and balance in the education workforce.

Number of female teachers at the secondary level expressed as a percentage of the total number of teachers (male and female) at the secondary 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 secondary 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
%

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

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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.

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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 secondary 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-secondary-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 secondary school teachers who are women” [dataset]. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) - Education” [original data]. Retrieved May 19, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-secondary-school-teachers-who-are-female