Comparison of Female Teachers in Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Education: China and the World

Overview & Synopsis

This report is based on statistics published yearly in the World Bank and the Education Statistics Yearbook by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China. Using these freely available statistics, "ECNU Review of Education" aims to provide a basic comparative overview of representation of female teachers in all levels of basic education--both in China and the world. While this report articulates the aforementioned data in a comparative way, no absolute or final conclusions are meant to be drawn from these comparisons. Rather, we hope the following serves as a method of drawing attention to educational issues such as gender equality. Furthermore, we also hope that this report will serve to encourage follow-up research related to this topic. Before comparing China's percentage of female educators across all level of basic education to that of the world average, certain distinctions are necessary. Following a law passed in 1986, the People's Republic of China solidified the country's compulsory education standard of 6 years of primary education and 3 years of secondary education. Secondary education is divided into two parts: junior secondary education and senior secondary education. Both parts include vocational schools in supplied statistics, and as such any conclusions reflect all students participating in secondary education--vocational or otherwise. Despite this, the statistics given by the Ministry of Education separate the two parts of secondary education, whereas the World Bank does not. In order to offer an easier-to-follow comparison, China's percentage of female teachers at the secondary level of education was found by averaging the percentages of both junior and senior secondary education. It is therefore worth noting that the annual percentage of female teachers was higher in junior secondary education than that of the senior secondary level. This difference usually took the form of being within three percentage points--the smallest being a 2.53% difference in 2013 and the largest a 3.3% difference in 2017. In addition, data are taken only from the years 2013-2017 solely for the reason that the Ministry of Education has only published data for these years.