More women and girls are being educated. Younger women are now more likely to be educated than their mothers. The percentage of women with no formal education has been more than halved in a single generation. And of the 960 million illiterate people in the world, two-thirds are women. 1 Health Women everywhere are having fewer children and marrying later.
Increased education has a marked effect in improving maternal and family health.
1 Health Maternal death rates are 15 to 50 times greater in the developing world than in most developed countries. Half a million women die each year as a consequence of pregnancy and childbirth. At least a quarter of all women have no access to family planning. And many women are still having more children than they would like - one survey showed that in almost half the 20 nations for which data are available, women want at least one child fewer than they did 10 to 15 years ago. The number of women contracting HIV is growing faster than the number of men.