Female literacy in India is going up but rural-urban education divide continues

By: Yash Gupte

The urban literacy rate of women in 1998 was 16 percent, which has increased tremendously to 83 percent in 2021. During the same period rural literacy rate among women increased from 17 percent to 65 percent.

The United Nations released its report on Human Development Index (HDI). It placed India at 132nd rank, a drop of two ranks for two consecutive years. More importantly, India was placed 122nd out of 191 countries in on the Gender Inequality Index, performing below par on the four sub-indices economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival. As far as education is concerned, India ranked 107th and 121th in literacy rate.

The abysmal performance in women empowerment is also reflected in the recently released National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data. One of the biggest achievements of India was the increase in literacy rate to 74.04 percent in 2010-11 from 18.3 percent in 1950-51. Take literacy rate for example. While the country has made significant progress in improving literacy over the years, it continues to be home to 313 million illiterate people; 30 percent of them are women, far more than men. When compared with the rest of the world, the female literacy rate is considerably low in India at around 70 percent, which is 22 percentage points below the world average.

Gender gap in literacy

Three decades ago, the adult male literacy rate in India was almost twice that for adult females. While this gap has narrowed substantially over the years, adult male literacy rate still surpasses the adult female literacy rate by 13 percentage points. According to the latest NFHS findings, 61 percent of women in the country are literate as compared to 81.4 percent of males.

There is a definite jump in female literacy in the past decades. The urban literacy rate of women in 1998 was 16 percent, which has increased tremendously to 83 percent in 2021. During the same period rural literacy rate among women increased from 17 percent to 65 percent. However, urban women literacy still surpasses rural women literacy by 17 percentage points.

If we dig deeper into data, we can see that the status of education in rural areas, especially for women, has seen a very radical change. Percentage of rural women with more than 10 years of schooling has increased from 21 percent in 2005-6 to 42 percent in 2020-21. Among urban women, the percentage of those with more than 10 years of schooling increased by 15 percentage points during the same period. While, more girls are seeking education then they did a few decades ago, the very fact that more than 50% of women population not able to complete their education is a wakeup call for the country.

The high rates of illiteracy among Indian women—and the corollary gender gap in literacy attainment—are attributable to many social, economic and cultural factors. Conventions and orthodox continue to smother rural landscape. Many regions still perceive boys as potential breadwinners. Poor families tend to educate their sons; girls are married off soon.

The lack of education among women prevents their participation in the workforce, thus hindering the country’s development. Many studies have also concluded that female education has a significant impact on the development of future generations as they usually have a more direct role to play in their child’s education than their father.