According to UNESCO and UNICEF, 122 million girls worldwide were out of school in 2025. For comparison, this equals the population of the whole country, Mexico, for example. And these are just the ones we see in the statistics — without taking into account girls from conflict zones, where data is simply not collected.

Of course, there is some progress underway. Over the past 20 years, the number of girls out of school has decreased by 39%. Since 2015, another 50 million girls have enrolled in classrooms around the world.

In developed countries, girls today even outperform boys in academic performance, both in reading and mathematics. In more than 100 countries, women make up the majority of university students. But this is only in developed countries. In the developing ones, the progress has stopped exactly where it is needed most.

We love to talk about women leaders and the barriers that stop them from advancing their careers, and this is important. But let's honestly ask ourselves: what kind of leadership are we talking about if the foundation, education itself, is inaccessible to every sixth girl on the planet?

Reasons Why Girls Don't Study

There are many reasons girls don’t have access to education, but here are some of the most shocking.

1. Poverty

According to the World Bank, poverty is the main factor determining a girl's access to education. Even in public schools, which are free, families face the costs of transportation, textbooks, and uniforms. As a result, they face a choice: to eat or to send a child to school?

If a family cannot afford to educate all their children, they are more likely to send their son to study than their daughter. And due to poverty, about 15 million girls will never be able to go to school, compared with 10 million boys.

2. Distance and safety

In many remote regions, the nearest secondary school is a few hours away. It's dangerous for a teenage girl to go there alone, which her parents are well aware of. That's why, it's easier for them to make the girl stay at home, not to put her life under threat.

3. Child marriage

Perhaps, this is the most destructive mechanism. According to UNICEF, about 650 million women alive today were married before the age of 18, which means that every three seconds, somewhere in the world, a little girl gets married. Consequently, almost immediately after that, she drops out of school.

The thing is, every year of marriage before age 18 reduces the likelihood of graduating from high school by 4-10% points. Conversely, each additional year in secondary school reduces the risk of early marriage by 6 percentage points.

4. Pregnancy

Despite sounding absolutely terrifying, about 12 million girls aged 15-19 give birth to children every year. In many countries, a pregnant schoolgirl is formally or informally suspended from school. And even if the law prohibits it, social pressure and the need to care for the child do their job.

These barriers are an interconnected system. It’s the one in which a girl's upbringing is understood as a path to marriage and motherhood, while education just doesn't fit in.

What the World Is Losing and What Can We Do About It

We usually consider the issue of the girls' education gap as a humanitarian one. But let's discuss it now from the other angle — economics. When we look at the numbers, it becomes clear that the cost of educational inequality is staggering.

The World Bank estimates that limited access to education for girls results in a $15-30 trillion loss in productivity and lifetime earnings worldwide. To put that into perspective, the amount is roughly equivalent to one to two years of the United States' GDP.

At the same time, investing in girls’ education delivers some of the highest returns available. Research by Plan International and Citi shows that every dollar invested generates approximately $2.80 in additional GDP. If all girls completed secondary education by 2030, developing countries could see their economies grow by an average of 10% over the following decade.

The benefits have a serious impact on individual lives and future generations as well, not only the nation as a whole. Each additional year of secondary education increases a woman’s future earnings by 10–20%.

This is why discussions about women’s leadership and gender equality should begin much earlier than the boardroom. Where do the female leaders we are inspired by so much come from? They come from schools and from universities where they were allowed to learn, ask questions, make mistakes.

So, to solve this issue, we first need to acknowledge that it exists. We should not let ourselves dissolve into abstractive numbers — each figure in this article is someone's specific life. Once we truly understand this, the next step is to think about what we can actually do to help.

There are many world organisations that we can support. Many of them even finance the education of a particular child, and directly help to solve this problem.

And last but not least, rethink the narrative. When we talk about women's leadership only in relation to the top management of Western companies, we see only the tip of the iceberg. Real women's leadership begins with a girl's right to pick up a textbook and sit at her desk.

Conclusion

When we speak about women's leadership, we often focus on those who have already reached the top. Yet long before the carrier barrier appears, millions of girls encounter the lack of access to education.

No girl can become a scientist, entrepreneur, politician, or CEO if she is never given the chance to learn. Every classroom a girl is excluded from narrows also the future of her community and society as a whole.

This is why education should not be viewed as a separate issue from gender equality or women's leadership, and of course, let’s not take it for granted. It is the foundation upon which both are built.

Until every girl has the opportunity to sit at a desk, open a textbook, and imagine a future for herself, our conversations about equal opportunities will remain incomplete.