# 3.2. Gender Disparity in Literacy and Student Performance

Gender parity can also be measured for literacy. In 2019, the GPI for the literacy rate for the population aged 5-50 years had a value of 1.00 at the national level, as well as at the province level for areas included in this study. The gender parity in literacy is also observed in the selected districts of Banjarmasin and Banjarbaru. However, the GPI for the literacy rate in the districts of Bangkalan and Sampang is slightly lower, at 0.97 and 0.94.<sup>20</sup> The situation for the population over age 50 nationally is different, as it does not reflect the advances in education in recent decades. The gender gap in literacy for this age group is about 11 percentage points in favor of males, which is far greater than those under 50, where the gender gap in favor of males is less than one percentage point. This higher level of inequality in the older population and almost-parity in the younger population indicates that advances in equity in education have expanded literacy for girls as explained in the previous section.

<mark>Reading proficiency is another proxy for foundational learning in other subjects. A new indicator,</mark> _<mark>Learning Poverty</mark>_ <mark>, is defined as being unable to read and understand a short, age-appropriate text by age 10. The overall Learning poverty level in Indonesia is 35 percent which means 35 percent of Indonesian children at late primary age today are not proficient in reading, adjusted for the Out-of-School children. Learning poverty for girls (29.3 percent) is much lower than boys (41.4 percent), showing female advantage in reading proficiency.</mark> On student performance, girls have slightly outperformed boys in all subjects tested in the national exam ( _Ujian Nasional_ , UN) for students from 2016 until 2018 for grade 9. The UN data show the differences in exam scores between girls and boys were largest for Indonesian language ( _Bahasa Indonesia, 66.52 and 71.19_ ), followed by English (57.23 and 54.86) with average score differences of 4.67 and 2.37, respectively, of 100 points. The average scores for mathematics and science are generally low. Girls’ average mathematics score in the past three years is 48.3, while the average score for boys is slightly lower at 46.9. Similar trends are also observed in science, where the average score difference between girls and boys is only 1.3 percentage points, with girls slightly outperforming boys. While variations of the score differences are observed at the local level, overall 96 percent of districts have similar trends in the past three years, where the average score for girls is higher than the average score for boys. In 2018, the highest score gap observed was in Bantul, where girls outperformed boys by 6.6 percentage points across all UN subjects.

On international assessments and in the classroom, girls similarly outperform boys in Indonesia. Following Indonesia’s participation in the 2018 PISA, results showed that girls scored higher in all subjects, most significantly in reading. The average scores for Indonesian boys in math, science and reading, respectively, were 373, 392 and 358, while the respective scores for girls were 383, 399 and 383.<sup>21</sup> Results from the 2015 TIMSS showed that girls scored 10 percentage points higher than boys in mathematics and 8 percentage points higher in science (Mullis et. al, 2015).

> 20 Susenas 2018.

> 21 OECD Education GPS: Indonesia Student Performance (PISA 2015).

> <u>http://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?primaryCountry=IDN&treshold=10&topic=PI</u>

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