The struggle to better educate the youth has yielded success in all corners of the globe and is perhaps most uniformly pronounced in Southeast Asia. With data by the Stockholm based Gapminder Foundation, this post delves specifically into the progress of strengthening women’s education in the region. Taking into account girls aged 15 to 24, the latest data comes from 2015.
A clear regional trend becomes apparent in the center of the map with Brunei, Singapore, and Malaysia. A 20 year-old woman in Brunei can be expected to have spent upwards of 15 years in education, while in Cambodia or Laos, the mean number of years spent by a woman of this age is less than 7.
And while disparities exist in the region, progress in this regard has been marked uniformly, with nations doubling and even tripling their numbers between 1970 and 2015.
While progress anywhere should be celebrated, such advances did not come about passively—but rather through the persistent efforts of domestic and international actors actively working to embolden and build the infrastructure necessary while tearing down the obstacles faced by local communities.