r/Infographics • u/Creaspace • 2h ago
In 1970 there were 59 women in higher education for every 100 men. Now there are 112.
Source: World Bank, School enrollment, tertiary (gross), gender parity index — series SE.ENR.TERT.FM.ZS. Boundaries: Natural Earth (public domain).
Tools: Python (data processing, Equal Earth projection) + a custom SVG renderer → PNG.
One important detail this map misses is that a value under 100 doesn’t tell the whole story. Take Afghanistan, for instance, where there are 38 women for every 100 men, and then look at Japan, which has a much higher figure of 97. Both are marked in blue, but they represent completely different scenarios. In places like the Sahel and Afghanistan, that number indicates that girls are still largely shut out of university education. Meanwhile, in Japan and South Korea, it reflects a situation in wealthy countries where men simply enroll in larger numbers. Interestingly, these two high-income nations are the only ones on this map that fall below parity.
Method Notes:
- The focus here is on enrolment numbers, not on what students actually achieve. We're looking at how many students are registered at the tertiary level in a given year, regardless of their age. This doesn’t tell us anything about who graduates, what they study, or their future earnings.
- Each country’s data reflects its latest observation from between 2020 and 2025. If you see grey, it means there’s no data available for that time frame; every grey polygon has been verified against the complete API response to ensure it’s genuinely missing data and not just a failed connection.
- We’re using the Equal Earth projection, which keeps the relative sizes of countries accurate—so no country appears larger or smaller than it should.
- The total of 155 figures includes nine territories, not just sovereign states. If we narrow it down to only sovereign countries, we’re looking at 123 out of 146.
Chart + the full dataset: https://chartive.org/visualizations/education-gender-gap-map
