Girls in School: Where Gender Gaps Still Widen

On the first day of school, in thousands of West African villages, girls walk through the gate at the same rate as boys. A few years later, many are gone, and those who remain do not always read better than before. Gender equality in education was long framed as a problem of access; it has become a problem of trajectory. The gap is no longer measured so much at the primary-school gate as in cycle completion and, more insidiously, in what girls actually learn. This shift changes everything for decision-makers: a dashboard that tracks only enrolment can display surface-level parity while masking an inequality that is worsening. This article maps where these gaps are re-forming today, shows with data that they are not inevitable, and quantifies what inaction costs.

A geography of out-of-school children that is still gendered

West and Central Africa remains the region of the world with the highest share of out-of-school children: according to UNICEF, 57 million children aged 6 to 18, close to a quarter of all out-of-school children worldwide. Marginalisation is sharpest in the Sahel. In Niger, 41.7% of primary-school-age girls were out of school in 2024 (World Bank), and the country has the lowest gender parity index in the region. These figures signal that, at equal access constraints (poverty, distance, insecurity), families still arbitrate against girls. Being out of school is therefore not only a question of resources, but also a question of social norms, which calls for different levers: a budget alone cannot shift a norm.

The contrast with continental averages is striking. In sub-Saharan Africa, seven girls in ten complete primary school, but only four in ten complete lower secondary (World Bank, 2018). In other words, attrition is not uniform over time: it concentrates in a few pivotal years, precisely those where targeted policy produces the most effect.

The gap is about completion, not only access

The most useful diagnosis for public policy comes down to one observation: enrolment parity does not mechanically carry through to completion or to the rest of the journey. In Benin, the gross secondary enrolment rate remains lower for girls (40.3%) than for boys (46.7%) in 2022, according to the World Bank. This differential drop-out, above six points, occurs in the transition from primary to secondary, when indirect costs (transport, boarding), safety risks and pressure to marry all accumulate. That is the place, and the moment, where public intervention yields the most.

This shift in the gap forces a change in the indicator used to steer policy. A ministry celebrating the achievement of enrolment parity at primary level may, in good faith, believe the battle won when it is only beginning. The challenge is no longer to bring the girl to school once, but to keep her in the system through cycle transitions, the points where the system loses the most pupils and loses more girls than boys. As long as national dashboards stop at enrolment, they measure a battle already nearly won and ignore the one still to be fought.

A trajectory, not a fate: what the Senegal-Niger comparison reveals

The best proof that a gap is not a geographic curse is that a neighbour has narrowed it. Over two decades, girls' primary completion has followed opposite paths in two nearby Sahelian countries. In Senegal, it rose from 48.7% in 2005 to 73.9% in 2024 (World Bank), an almost continuous climb. In Niger, after recovering to 56.9% in 2019, it fell back to 40.6% in 2024, under the combined effect of insecurity, population displacement and institutional fragility. The same starting point, two outcomes. The gap between the two countries, negligible in the mid-2000s, now exceeds thirty points.

Two lessons emerge from this divergence. The first is that progress is real but reversible: the Niger curve is a reminder that a security or institutional shock can erase a decade of gains in five years, and that girls are the first victims when journeys become dangerous and schools close. The second is that Senegal's trajectory is no miracle: it results from a policy sustained over time, which makes it a reproducible model rather than a cultural exception. For a decision-maker, the message is clear: neither fatalism nor complacency is warranted; what matters is the consistency of the effort and its protection against shocks.

The best proof that a gender gap is not inevitable is that a neighbouring country, starting from the same point, has already narrowed it.

The why: unpacking the mechanisms that push girls out of school

If the gap re-forms in adolescence, it is because a cluster of mechanisms converges precisely at that age. Disentangling them is essential: each calls for a distinct lever, and mistaking a poverty cause for a norm cause leads to spending in the wrong place.

• Early marriage. In West and Central Africa, about 41% of girls are married before age 18, and one in three of them before age 15 (UNICEF). Marriage is both cause and consequence of leaving school: it interrupts schooling and, conversely, an out-of-school girl is more exposed to marriage.
• The indirect cost of secondary school. Transport, supplies, boarding or city lodging: at the start of lower secondary, these expenses weigh heavily and, on a constrained household budget, the arbitrage often goes against the girl.
• Distance and safety. The remoteness of secondary schools and insecurity on the way weigh more on girls, as Niger's drop-out after 2019 confirms.
• Social norms. At equal constraints of poverty, distance and insecurity, families still arbitrate against girls, a sign that beyond resources, a norm remains to be shifted.
• Perceived quality. When school does not teach children to read, the perceived value of continuing falls, and dropping out becomes a rational calculation for poor families.

These mechanisms are not merely theoretical: a randomised controlled trial in Niger quantified them by acting directly on cost. Girls from disadvantaged rural areas received a lower-secondary scholarship of USD 306 per year over three years (2017-2020). Result measured at follow-up: they were 53% less likely to have dropped out of school and 49% less likely to be married than the control group (Giacobino, Huillery, Michel, Sage, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2024). In practice, the scheme halved both drop-out and marriage among adolescent girls. This is the empirical demonstration that the gap is not immutable: a modest transfer, targeted at the right moment, shifts both schooling and the marriage timeline at once.

Enrolment parity guarantees neither completion nor learning

Senegal offers the most instructive case, precisely because it succeeds on access. The country has reached primary enrolment parity and now posts the highest gender parity index in the region. Girls' primary completion has risen markedly, to 73.9% in 2024 (World Bank). Yet the adult literacy rate reveals a persistent gap between past attendance and real skills: 41.5% among women versus 61.5% among men in 2023 (World Bank). Enrolment statistics have progressed far faster than the mastery of foundational skills.

This gap has a name at the regional scale: learning poverty. In sub-Saharan Africa, 89% of 10-year-olds were unable to read and understand a simple text in 2022, up from 86% before the pandemic (World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF). When a system enrols massively without teaching, enrolment parity can coexist with a deep inequality of skills, durably penalising the girls who leave earlier and return less often.

Enrolment is measured on the first day of school. Equality is measured on graduation day, and on the reading test.

A regional ranking that clarifies priorities

The gender parity index (GPI) for primary and secondary enrolment, measured by the World Bank, ranks West African countries on a clear gradient. Above 1, girls are better enrolled than boys (Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ghana); below it, the gap works against them. Benin (0.897) and especially Niger (0.838) are among the most deficient. This GPI says nothing about completion or learning, as the Senegalese case reminds us, but it unambiguously identifies the countries where access itself remains to be won. Read alongside the completion chart, it draws a map of priorities: win access in the Sahel, secure completion and quality elsewhere.

The cost of inaction, quantified

Giving up on schooling girls is not a saving, it is a deferred expense. At the global level, the World Bank estimates the loss of human capital linked to limited educational opportunities for girls at between USD 15 trillion and USD 30 trillion. In Africa, early marriage alone, through its effect on girls' education, costs about USD 63 billion in lost earnings and human capital for twelve countries representing half the continent's population (World Bank, 2018). And the lifetime earnings gap between women and men represents a wealth loss estimated at USD 2.5 trillion for sub-Saharan Africa alone.

The calculation is just as telling at the national level. In Niger, the average duration of schooling is only 1.7 years for women versus 2.8 for men, far below the WAEMU averages (2.5 and 4.6) and those of sub-Saharan Africa (5.1 and 6.9). According to the IMF, closing the gender gap in years of schooling at each income level would raise the country's long-term GDP by 11%. Girls' education is therefore not one social expenditure among others: it is one of the highest-return macroeconomic investments available in the region.

What national averages hide, and why fine-grained measurement changes the decision

A national average is a compromise that can be wrong for almost everyone. A national completion rate of 60% can conceal 85% in affluent urban areas and 25% in poor rural zones, where out-of-school girls are precisely concentrated. Likewise, a country-level GPI close to 1 can mask deep regional imbalances. Aggregate data reassures dashboards but misleads public action: it leads to spreading resources thin where they do not bite, instead of concentrating them where drop-out is real.

This is precisely where disaggregated, geolocated and continuous measurement changes the decision. Tracking completion and learning by sex, by level, by district and by wealth quintile answers three questions the average obscures: which girls drop out, where, and at what point in the journey? The Niger trial shows this in reverse: it was by knowing how to target disadvantaged rural girls at the entry to lower secondary that the scholarship halved drop-out. Without fine-grained data, the same budget, distributed uniformly, would have produced a far smaller effect. Targeting is a multiplier of budget efficiency, and targeting requires data.

This is CRAD's conviction: gender equality in education is not steered with annual enrolment averages, but with cohorts followed over time, disaggregated by sex and geolocated, that turn a finding into a budget decision. Measuring finely means spending wisely.

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