UN for Men Too
Read
The evidence
The ask
Topics · 04 · Education
The reading gap is one of the most measured facts in education. It shows up in 51 of the 57 countries PIRLS tested at fourth grade, it has been there on the OECD average in every PISA round since 2000, and almost nowhere is it anybody's job to close it.
This page carries what the surveys actually say, what changes when the person marking the paper cannot see the name, who fills the universities now, and what happened to the one national commission that studied boys in school. The claims we refuse to make are at the bottom.
every figure names its survey, its wave and its population. A gap in average scores says nothing about any individual boy. And nothing here treats girls' progress as the problem, because it is not.
The dossier used to open at age ten, because that is where the international reading studies start. The gap is older than that, and the UN measures it itself. Indicator 4.2.1 asks what share of children aged twenty-four to fifty-nine months are developmentally on track, and it is reported by sex.
Indicator 4.2.1, children aged 24 to 59 months developmentally on track in health, learning and psychosocial well-being. Boys are ahead in 8 of the 60. Computed from the UN SDG Global Database by pairing each country's male and female value for the same reference year, and the arithmetic is reproducible from the API link with no login.
“Proportion of children aged 24-59 months who are developmentally on track in health, learning and psychosocial well-being, by sex”
The range runs from 5.3 points in boys' favour in the Turks and Caicos Islands to 13.4 points in girls' favour in North Macedonia. A gap of three to four points is small next to the reading gap that arrives later, and the point of putting it here is not its size. It is that the direction is already set before school starts, and that the UN has the number.
“male and female values paired per country and reference year”
Sixty countries report both sexes, with reference years from 2010 to 2021, and most are low or middle income because the underlying instrument is the UNICEF MICS household survey. This is not a world picture and not a rich-country picture, and the indicator's own metadata notes that comparable data exist for around 78 countries on the older instrument and about 15 on the current one. Any sentence built on this must carry the coverage with it.
“Data on the indicator collected through implementation of the ECDI2030 are currently available for around 15 countries. Comparable data collected by the ECDI are currently available for 78 countries.”
The metadata for 4.2.1 lists sex as its disaggregation. So the honest position is not that boys are uncounted at this age: they are counted, the result is published, and it shows them behind in 87 per cent of reporting countries. What is missing is anyone whose job it is to act on that, which is a different and narrower complaint than not being measured.
“Disaggregation: Sex”
This is not a contested finding. It is one of the most replicated results in education research, produced by two separate international studies, in different populations, on different instruments, for a quarter of a century. Nothing below is an estimate by this campaign.
PISA 2022 tested 15-year-olds in 81 countries and economies, with results published December 2023. The 24-point figure is the OECD average, not a single country. For comparison, boys led girls in mathematics by nine points on the same OECD average.
“Boys outperformed girls in mathematics by nine score points and girls outperformed boys in reading by 24 score points on average across OECD countries.”
Level 2 is the OECD baseline proficiency level, at which students can at minimum identify the main idea in a text of moderate length. Scope is 15-year-olds, OECD average, PISA 2022. In 78 out of 80 countries and economies with data, a larger share of boys than girls were low performers in reading.
“On average across OECD countries in PISA 2022, 31% of boys and 22% of girls did not attain the baseline level of proficiency in reading, Level 2”
OECD, PISA 2022 Results Volume I, Chapter 4: Equity in education in PISA 2022FACT 06
The OECD country note for Norway also reports that 34 percent of boys and 20 percent of girls scored below Level 2 in reading. Volume I lists Norway among the eight systems with reading gaps of 40 points or more, alongside Albania, Qatar, Slovenia, the United Arab Emirates, Finland, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. Norway's sample was 6611 students in 267 schools.
“Boys and girls performed at similar levels on average in mathematics but girls outperformed boys in reading by 42 score points in Norway.”
The OECD country note for Finland reports 28 percent of boys and 14 percent of girls below Level 2 in reading. At the top end, 12 percent of girls and 6 percent of boys reached Level 5 or 6. Scope is 15-year-olds in PISA 2022.
“Girls outperformed boys in mathematics by 5 score points and in reading by 45 score points in Finland.”
Denmark has one of the smaller reading gaps in the Nordic region, close to the OECD average of 24 points, against 42 in Norway and 45 in Finland. The below Level 2 shares are from the OECD country note for Denmark, PISA 2022, 15-year-olds.
“Boys outperformed girls in mathematics by 12 score points; girls outperformed boys in reading by 21 score points in Denmark.”
The OECD states in this same chapter that PISA has consistently found girls outperforming boys in reading, but the chapter predates PISA 2022 and nowhere enumerates a wave-by-wave count, so do not claim a specific tally such as eight of eight. The gap has narrowed rather than widened: almost 30 points on the OECD average in 2018 against 24 points in 2022. The every-country result is scoped to PISA 2018 only; in PISA 2022 girls scored above boys in 79 of 81 countries and economies, with the difference not statistically significant in Chile and Costa Rica.
“In all countries and economies that participated in PISA 2018, girls significantly outperformed boys in reading”
OECD, PISA 2018 Results Volume II, Chapter 7: Girls' and boys' performance in PISAFACT 10
PIRLS is the IEA's international reading study of fourth graders, a different population from PISA's 15-year-olds, so the gap is already present well before secondary school. In the remaining six countries the difference was not statistically significant, and in none of the 57 was boys' achievement significantly higher; the no-difference cases include Spain, the Czech Republic, Israel, Malta and Iran. Source discrepancy to be aware of before publishing any point figure: the IEA press release of 16 May 2023 states an average difference of 19 points, while the PIRLS 2021 International Results report gives an average girls' advantage of 18 points across all 57 countries and 16 points across the 43 countries that collected data on schedule. Lead with 51 of 57, and if a size figure is needed use 18 points attributed to the international report rather than 19 from the press release.
“Girls had higher reading achievement than boys in 51 of the 57 PIRLS 2021 countries, with an average difference of 19 points.”
IEA, PIRLS 2021 International Results in Reading, press release 16 May 2023FACT 11
The strongest evidence in this file, because it is a natural experiment rather than an opinion survey: the same pupils, the same syllabus, marked twice, once by someone who can see who they are and once by someone who cannot. Five countries have run that comparison. The honest ceiling on the finding is the last node, and it is Norway's own.
Victor Lavy compared the blind state matriculation score with the non-blind school score for the same student in Israeli Jewish secular high schools, using Ministry of Education records for the three cohorts of high-school seniors 2000 to 2002, with the main table (Table 2) estimated on 2001 data. Across nine subjects (chemistry, computer science, mathematics, physics, bible studies, biology, English, history, literature) the estimated coefficient on male interacted with the non-blind score ran from 0.053 standard deviations against boys in literature to 0.180 in English, with standard errors clustered at school level. Lavy states these estimates were negative and significantly different from zero in all nine subjects; note that the smallest, chemistry at 0.058 with a standard error of 0.033, clears only the 10 percent level, so do not lean on the chemistry column. Mathematics alone had 109,928 stacked observations across 363 schools. The sample excludes Arab and Jewish State-Religious schools because many are gender segregated.
“These estimates were negative and significantly different from zero in all nine subjects.”
Camille Terrier's dataset follows 4,490 pupils in 191 classes across 35 middle schools, mostly in deprived areas of the Creteil education district in France, from grade 6 (age 11) to grade 9. The national test is set by the French Education Ministry, is identical across schools and is graded externally by markers who do not know pupils' names, genders, social backgrounds or behaviour. At the beginning of grade 6 in mathematics, girls' mean score was 0.147 standard deviations below boys' on the blind test and 0.170 standard deviations above boys' on their own teachers' non-blind scores, a swing of about 0.32 SD. In French language the gap favoured girls on both measures (0.434 blind, 0.460 non-blind). Terrier states these schools are mostly in deprived areas and do not perfectly represent all French pupils.
“boys outperform girls when grades are blind, but the opposite is true when teachers assess their own pupils”
In the same French dataset, Terrier's difference-in-differences estimate for third-term grade 6 mathematics is 0.259 standard deviations in girls' favour (standard error 0.035, 7,714 observations, class fixed effects); conditional on blind scores, boys' non-blind mathematics scores were 5.2 percent lower than girls'. Assigning a teacher who is one standard deviation more biased against boys reduces boys' progress relative to girls by 0.123 SD in mathematics and 0.106 SD in French. Boys fell behind girls by 0.205 SD in mathematics over the four years of middle school, and Terrier attributes 6 percent of that to teachers' gender bias. She also reports that without the grading bias in favour of girls, the gender gap in choosing a high-school science track would be 12.5 percent larger in favour of boys. Terrier states she cannot fully separate grading bias from evaluation methods and classroom behaviour.
“Over the four years of middle school, teachers' gender bias against boys accounts for 6% of boys falling behind girls in math.”
Daniel Munich and Tomas Protivinsky matched anonymously scored Scio admission test results taken in spring 2014 with the mathematics and Czech language grades on the same pupils' most recent half-year report cards. The sample is 4,880 pupils (2,563 girls, 2,317 boys) in the final year of basic school, from four Czech regions where the Scio tests were compulsory. On the Czech 1 to 5 scale, where 1 is the best grade, a boy graded 3 in mathematics scored about the same on the anonymous test as a girl graded 2.4, so girls received the better mark. The authors report that a model with school fixed effects confirmed the result, so it is not driven by differences between schools. In Czech language this study found no grading difference between boys and girls with the same test results, calling it negligible and on the edge of statistical significance. The peer-reviewed version is Protivinsky and Munich, Studies in Educational Evaluation 59 (2018), 141-149, DOI 10.1016/j.stueduc.2018.07.006, whose abstract reports bias in favour of girls in both subjects. The authors name gender differences in socio-emotional or non-cognitive skills, such as engagement and behaviour in class, as the most plausible explanation.
“Dívky dostávají na vysvědčení v průměru o 0,6 klasifikačního stupně lepší známku z matematiky než chlapci, při stejných výsledcích v testech.”
Munich and Protivinsky, IDEA at CERGE-EI, Study 1/2018, "Co skrývají známky na vysvědčení?"FACT 15
Petter Berg, Ola Palmgren and Bjorn Tyrefors compared the teacher-set final grade 9 mathematics grade with the Stockholm municipality introductory mathematics test taken on entry to upper secondary school, covering 21,199 students at Stockholm public high schools across the years 2012 to 2017 (roughly 80 percent of students at those schools). Both the grade and the 35-question test follow the same grade 9 syllabus, but the grade is not externally evaluated. The estimated gap is 23 percent of a standard deviation of the test score, against boys. Scope caution: the test is designed by mathematics grading experts at Stockholm University, but it is marked at the receiving high schools without name removal, under strict point-by-point instructions. This is a teacher-grade versus standardised-test comparison in which the marker has no prior relation to the student, not a blind re-grading experiment. The authors note the effect is about double what Lindahl (2007) found comparing final grades with internally graded national tests.
“The results show a substantial grading difference, consistent with grading bias against boys.”
Torberg Falch and Linn Renee Naper used Statistics Norway register data on students finishing compulsory school (10th grade) in the cohorts graduating spring 2002 to 2005, comparing teacher-set grades with the anonymously graded central exit exam in mathematics, English and Norwegian. On the 1 to 6 scale the average gender grading gap across all subjects was 0.05 grade points and highly significant; by subject the difference-in-difference estimates were 0.05 in mathematics, 0.07 in English and 0.02 in Norwegian. Measured against the standard deviation of the teacher-grade-minus-exam difference, the mathematics and English effects correspond to about 0.09 standard deviations, while Norwegian is about 0.02 standard deviations and is, in the authors' words, barely significant. The gap was not sensitive to interactions with school fixed effects, and the authors report that competitiveness of the exam setting does not explain it. Figures quoted are from the NTNU working paper version; the peer-reviewed article is Economics of Education Review 36 (2013), 12-25, DOI 10.1016/j.econedurev.2013.05.002.
“Compared to scores at anonymously evaluated central exit exams, girls get significantly higher grades than boys when assessed by their teacher.”
Utdanningsdirektoratet analysed the difference between standpunktkarakter and eksamenskarakter at 10. trinn (final year of grunnskole) over the ten school years 2009-10 to 2018-19, pooling norsk hovedmal, norsk sidemal, engelsk and matematikk, about 739,000 pupil-exam combinations. 43 percent of girls and 39 percent of boys received a lower grade at the written exam than their teacher-set standpunkt grade, while 11 percent of girls and 12 percent of boys received a higher one. This is the honest Norwegian ceiling on the claim, and it is a low one. Udir states the gender differences are generally small ("generelt sma forskjeller"), including when comparing boys and girls holding the same standpunkt grade. Much of the raw gap is mechanical: the share dropping a grade rises with the standpunkt grade, 57 percent for those with a 5 against 30 percent for those with a 3, simply because a higher grade has further to fall, and girls sit higher in the standpunkt distribution. Holding the standpunkt grade constant the pattern does not line up with the grading-bias studies: among pupils with standpunkt 4, about 57 percent of girls but 53 percent of boys get the same or a higher grade at the exam. Use this source to show what Norwegian national data does and does not settle, not as Norwegian confirmation of the international findings.
“43 prosent av jentene og 39 prosent av guttene får lavere karakter til eksamen, mens 11 prosent av jentene og 12 prosent av guttene får høyere karakter”
Utdanningsdirektoratet (Udir), "Karakterforskjeller fra standpunkt til eksamen på grunnskolen"FACT 18
Staffing, diagnosis and discipline, from national registers rather than from impressions. These are counts of what institutions recorded, not claims about what anyone intended.
Eurostat, Primary education statistics (Statistics Explained), covers ISCED level 1 teachers, reference year 2024, EU-27 aggregate that uses 2023 data for Czechia, Ireland and Croatia. It counts 273,000 male primary teachers against 1.6 million female primary teachers. The male share was below 10.0 percent in 9 EU countries and below 20.0 percent in 22 of the 27, with Lithuania lowest at 3.9 percent and Denmark highest at 32.8 percent. The comparable 2023 EU figure was 14.2 percent male, so the level is close to flat year on year, not falling sharply.
“The share of female primary education teachers averaged 85.6% across the EU in 2024, with male teachers accounting for the remaining 14.4%.”
Eurostat, Primary education statistics (Statistics Explained)FACT 19
OECD, Education at a Glance 2024, Chapter D5, Table D5.4 (Gender distribution of teachers, by level of education, 2022), percentage of female teachers in public and private institutions. OECD average is 96 percent female in pre-primary, 83 percent in primary (ISCED 1), 68 percent in lower secondary and 60 percent in upper secondary, so the imbalance is largest with the youngest pupils. Among OECD countries the primary figure runs from 64 percent in Japan and 65 percent in Turkiye up to 96 percent in Lithuania; Norway is 74 percent female at primary level. The same chapter states that the imbalance can affect students and that a shortage of male applicants can worsen teacher shortages overall.
“Women account for over 70% of primary teachers in all countries except Denmark, Japan and Türkiye.”
OECD, Education at a Glance 2024, Indicator D5, Table D5.4FACT 20
Bufdir, the Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs, publishes national gender equality statistics on staff in kindergarten and school, sourced to Statistics Norway. Its page states that in 2022 one in four teachers in grunnskolen (compulsory school, grades 1 to 10, covering ISCED levels 1 and 2) were men, and that men made up 42 percent of grunnskole teachers in 1985. Bufdir attributes the 1985 figure to Einarsen og Dahl 1997, so cite it as a Bufdir statement rather than as raw register output. Current register data: SSB StatBank table 12065 gives 21,406 male teachers out of 79,226 teachers in grunnskolen in 2025, which is 27 percent. OECD Education at a Glance 2024 Table D5.4 puts Norway's primary level alone at 74 percent female for 2022.
“I 2022 var 1 av 4 lærere i grunnskolen menn.”
Bufdir, Utdanning i et kjønnsperspektiv (national gender equality statistics), citing SSBFACT 21
Bufdir's gender equality statistics page on education, citing Samordna opptak (the Norwegian central admissions service) for 2022, reports that men made up 19.5 percent of the students who turned up at the start of study on grunnskolelærerutdanningen 1.-7. trinn, the five-year teacher degree qualifying for grades 1 to 7. Scope is the 2022 intake to that one programme, not all teacher education and not applicants. The same page notes the government strategy Lærerløftet had already recorded too few male applicants to teacher education for the lowest grades. Bufdir has not updated this figure past 2022, so present it as the 2022 intake.
“I 2022 utgjorde menn 19,5 prosent av studentene som møtte til studiestart på grunnskolelærerutdanningen 1.-7. trinn.”
Bufdir, Utdanning i et kjønnsperspektiv, citing Samordna opptak 2022FACT 22
Udir, the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, Fakta om grunnskolen 2023-2024, chapter on spesialundervisning. That year 51,000 pupils, 8.1 percent of all pupils in grunnskolen, had an individual decision on spesialundervisning, rising from 3.8 percent in year 1 to 11.1 percent in year 10. The sex split was 10.4 percent of all boys against 5.6 percent of all girls, so boys were roughly 1.9 times as likely to hold a decision. Under the new education act the category is now called individuelt tilrettelagt opplaering (ITO). Udir's Fakta om grunnskolen 2025-2026 records 47,400 pupils with an ITO decision, 7.6 percent of pupils, of whom 66 percent are boys, and its chapter heading states that 3 of 4 pupils who receive personal assistance are boys. Use the 2023-24 sex split as the headline, since the newer release covers a renamed category and a slightly lower boys' share. Do not claim a sharp or steady fall in the boys' share, as Udir does not publish that.
“10,4 prosent av alle gutter i grunnskolen får spesialundervisning, mens 5,6 prosent av jentene får spesialundervisning.”
Udir, Fakta om grunnskolen 2023-2024, SpesialundervisningFACT 23
UK Department for Education, Suspensions and permanent exclusions in England, academic year 2024/25, accredited official statistics published 9 July 2026. The suspension rate is total suspensions divided by total pupils, multiplied by 100, across state-funded primary, secondary and special schools. The permanent exclusion rate the same year was 0.16 per 100 male pupils against 0.07 per 100 female pupils, more than double. National totals were 913,000 suspensions (rate 10.88) and 9,900 permanent exclusions (rate 0.12), both down on 2023/24. Persistent disruptive behaviour was the most common recorded reason, 52 percent of all reasons given for suspension. These are recorded rates by sex; the release does not attribute causes.
“The suspension rate for male pupils was more than 1.5 times that of female pupils, with rates of 13.47 and 8.17, respectively.”
UK Department for Education, Suspensions and permanent exclusions in England, academic year 2024/25FACT 24
Folkehelseinstituttet (FHI), the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, drawing on Legemiddelregisteret (LMR), the national prescription register that succeeded Reseptregisteret. Scope is dispensed ADHD medicines, ages 13 to 17, calendar year 2023, published 18 November 2024. The same release gives 2004 levels of about 2 percent for boys and about 0.6 percent for girls, and states that five times as many girls were on ADHD medicine in 2023 as in 2004. Quote the girls' multiple, which is FHI's own, but give the boys' change as levels only, from about 2 percent in 2004 to 5.4 percent in 2023, because the release's Norwegian phrasing for boys does not convert cleanly into an English multiple. On diagnosis rather than medication, FHI's Folkehelserapporten chapter Del 4: Tidstrender i forekomst av ADHD-diagnoser (published 28 May 2025, Norsk pasientregister) records annual incidence of a first ADHD diagnosis among 2 to 17 year olds rising from 2022 to 2024 from 0.81 to 0.94 percent for boys and from 0.62 to 0.68 percent for girls, and states that incidence is now higher among teenage girls than teenage boys. Report both, because the gap is real and narrowing.
“5,4 prosent gutter og 3,5 prosent jenter mellom 13 og 17 år får nå medisiner for ADHD.”
Where the gap arrives once school ends. The last two nodes carry the part of this that is symmetric: one sex is under-represented in technology, the other in care and teaching, and only one of those has a funded pipeline.
OECD Education at a Glance 2024, Norway country note, page 1. Population is 25-34 year-olds, reference year 2023 (the note's attainment figures are drawn from EAG 2024 Table A1.2, which uses 2023). The OECD average tertiary attainment rate was 54% for women and 41% for men, a gap of 13 percentage points, and the OECD records the direction of the gap as holding in all OECD member countries without exception.
“women aged 25-34 are as likely or more likely than their male peers to have a tertiary qualification (54% compared to 41% on average across OECD countries)”
OECD, Education at a Glance 2024, Norway country noteFACT 26
OECD Education at a Glance 2024, Norway country note, page 1. Population is 25-34 year-olds in Norway, reference year 2023: 68% of women and 47% of men held a tertiary qualification. The comparable OECD averages in the same sentence are 54% for women and 41% for men, a 13 point gap.
“With a tertiary educational attainment rate of 68% for women and 47% for men, the gap is much wider than the OECD average in Norway.”
OECD, Education at a Glance 2024, Norway country noteFACT 27
Eurostat dataset edat_lfse_03 (EU Labour Force Survey), age 25-34, ISCED 2011 levels 5-8, share of population, dataset last updated 11 June 2026, extracted 15 August 2026. Denmark 2025: 61.3% of women and 44.1% of men, a gap of 17.2 points, against 52.0% and 34.6% in 2015, a gap of 17.4 points. Note that Eurostat flags breaks in the Danish series at 2016, 2017 and 2021, so the 2015 to 2025 comparison spans three methodological breaks and should be presented as a broad picture rather than a precise trend. The EU27 aggregate for 2025 is 50.5% for women and 39.3% for men, a gap of 11.2 points, up from 10.6 points in 2015; Eurostat's Statistics Explained article drawing on the same dataset rounds the 2025 EU figures to 50.6% and a gap of 11.3 points.
Eurostat, dataset edat_lfse_03 (EU Labour Force Survey)FACT 28
Direktoratet for høyere utdanning og kompetanse (HK-dir), Søkertall for universitet og høgskoler i Samordna opptak 2026, chapter 2.5, covering all 27 institutions in the coordinated admission system: 92,741 female and 58,115 male applicants. Among first-choice applicants, women were 79.5% in education studies (pedagogiske fag) and 77.5% in health studies, while men were 68.1% in technology programmes and 63.6% in information technology. HK-dir also records the female share in IT programmes rising from about 22.4% in 2017 to over 36% in 2026.
“I 2026 er det 92 741 kvinnelige søkere (61,5%) og 58 115 mannlige søkere (38,5%) i det samordnede opptaket til universitet og høyskoler.”
HK-dir / Samordna opptak, Søkertall for universitet og høgskoler i Samordna opptak 2026FACT 29
OECD Education at a Glance 2024, Norway country note, page 4, on new entrants to tertiary education in Norway. Of women entering tertiary education 12% were studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics; of men entering, 7% were entering education-related fields, which covers teacher training. Note the two percentages have different denominators, women entrants and men entrants respectively, so they are two separate shares and not a like-for-like comparison. The same bullet states that 57% of new entrants to tertiary education in Norway are women against an OECD average of 56%. The note does not give a separate reference year for this bullet.
“In Norway, only 12% of women entering tertiary education were studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, while only 7% of men were entering education-related fields.”
OECD, Education at a Glance 2024, Norway country noteFACT 30
Menn i helse is run by KS together with NAV, municipalities, counties and Helsedirektoratet. Helsedirektoratet's programme page, last professionally revised 9 February 2024, states that over 1,000 men have obtained the fagbrev as helsefagarbeider through the programme; the fagbrev is an upper-secondary vocational certificate, not a tertiary degree. This count is now stale and understates the programme: KS's release of 22 August 2024 states that over 1,400 participants will have taken the fagbrev during 2024, and also that 'Menn i helse tilbys na i 150 kommuner fordelt pa 13 fylker.' Use the 1,000 figure only when citing Helsedirektoratet directly. For contrast on the girls-into-technology side, NHO's programme page at nho.no/tema/kompetanse-og-utdanning/artikler/jenter-og-teknologi/ states that Jenter og teknologi, which NHO organised as a national project in 2016 with financial support from Barne- og likestillingsdepartementet, meets about 7,000 girls in grades 9 and 10 on its annual national tour.
“Menn i helse er et komprimert utdanningsløp frem til fagbrev som helsefagarbeider.”
Kunnskapsdepartementet press release of 11 September 2025 setting out the adopted admission rules. From admission to 2027/2028 universities and colleges may apply for quotas reserving a share of places for each sex on programmes with large imbalance; gender points (kjønnspoeng) are abolished from 2028/2029. Under the rules still in force for admission 2026/2027, Samordna opptak awards men 2 gender points on eight named programmes, including nursing at UiA and Lovisenberg, veterinary medicine and animal nursing at NMBU and child welfare studies at OsloMet, and 1 gender point on the professional psychology programme at NTNU, UiB, UiO and UiT, while women receive 2 gender points on a list of NTNU technology programmes.
“Universiteter og høyskoler kan søke om kvoter som sikrer en viss andel studieplasser til begge kjønn på studier med stor ubalanse mellom kjønnene. Kjønnspoeng avvikles fra studieåret 2028-2029.”
Kunnskapsdepartementet, Slik blir de nye reglene for opptak til høyere utdanningFACT 32
The stretch between leaving school and holding a job was the one part of this dossier with nothing in it, which is awkward, because it is the stretch that ends in most of the outcomes on the rest of this site. It is filled here from Eurostat's own tables rather than from anyone's summary of them, and the first thing those tables say is that the simple version of this argument is wrong. More young women than young men in the EU are not in employment, education or training. That belongs at the top of the section, not in a footnote.
Women 12.2 per cent, men 10.1 per cent. Any claim that young men dominate the NEET population is wrong at the headline level and we will not make it. The difference between the sexes is not in the size of the group but in what the group is made of, which the next three rows set out.
“Young persons neither in employment nor in education and training by labour status (NEET rates)”
Inactive means not working and not looking. Adding the unemployed to the inactive reproduces the headline: 3.7 plus 8.6 for women, 4.7 plus 5.4 for men. Much of the female inactivity at these ages is caregiving, which is visible in the age breakdown further down and is not a hidden disadvantage for men.
“wstatus: INAC, persons neither in employment nor in education and training who are inactive”
The mirror figure is starker. NEET and not wanting to work was 5.6 per cent of young women and 2.9 per cent of young men, close to double. So the male share of this population is weighted towards people looking for a job and not finding one, and the female share towards people out of the labour market for other reasons.
“wstatus: WANT / NWANT, wants to work / does not want to work”
Boys 5.8 per cent, girls 5.2 per cent, with the unemployed component 2.0 against 1.5. The reversal at 25 to 29 is the largest gap in the table and runs the other way: women 18.0 per cent against men 11.7, of which inactivity is 13.1 against 6.0. Reporting the 15 to 19 figure without the 25 to 29 figure would be selection, so both are here.
“age: Y15-19 and Y25-29, EU27 (2020 composition)”
Norwegian rates are roughly half the EU average for both sexes, and the gap is inside any reasonable margin. Men are marginally higher at 15 to 19 and 20 to 24, women marginally higher at 25 to 29. A Norwegian version of this argument cannot be built on the size of the gap, because there is not one.
“geo: NO, age: Y15-29, 2024”
SDG indicator 8.6.1 is the youth NEET rate, under target 8.6. Its official metadata states the position plainly. The data exists and Eurostat publishes it by sex; the framework that sets what the world must report does not ask for it. That is the same shape as indicator 16.2.3, written for both sexes and measured for one, and it is the difference between a number nobody collects and a number nobody is required to show you.
“No disaggregation is specifically required for this indicator, although having it disaggregated by sex is desirable, as is disaggregation by detailed age groups within the youth age band.”
UN Statistics Division, SDG indicator 8.6.1 metadata, last updated 27 March 2026FACT 38
Completion, then the labour market, then the disability rolls. This is the section that answers why a reading gap at fifteen is a UN-scale problem and not a school problem.
Eurostat indicator edat_lfse_14, EU Labour Force Survey, EU-27 aggregate, reference year 2025, data extracted April 2026. Population is people aged 18 to 24 whose highest completed level is ISCED 2011 levels 0 to 2 and who received neither formal nor non-formal education or training in the four weeks before the survey. The overall EU rate was 9.1 percent; the sex gap is 3.1 percentage points. Eurostat notes the pattern holds in nearly all EU countries, with Romania and Bulgaria the exceptions.
“In 2025, 10.6% of young men and 7.5% of young women in the EU were early leavers from education and training.”
Eurostat, Statistics Explained: Early leavers from education and trainingFACT 39
Statistics Norway (SSB), statistic Gjennomføring i videregående opplæring, cohort labelled 2019-2025, published 29 June 2026 and corrected 20 July 2026. Population is pupils starting Vg1 for the first time in autumn 2019, 65,293 in total, of whom 33,682 were men and 31,611 women. Pupils on general studies programmes are followed for five years, pupils on vocational programmes for six. The gap is 7.3 percentage points. On vocational programmes specifically, 68.8 percent of men and 74.5 percent of women completed; on general studies programmes, 88.9 percent and 92.3 percent.
“Elever som startet i Vg1 for første gang angitt høst, og andelen som har fullført med studie- eller yrkeskompetanse i løpet av fem/seks år”
Statistics Norway (SSB), Gjennomføring i videregående opplæring, Tabell 1 (StatBank table 14867)FACT 40
Statistics Norway StatBank table 14867, category Sluttet underveis, all education programmes, cohort 2019-2025, corrected figures of 20 July 2026. In absolute numbers this is 3,864 men and 2,395 women out of 65,293 pupils who started Vg1 in autumn 2019. The gap is concentrated in vocational programmes, where 18.4 percent of men and 14.3 percent of women dropped out, against 3.7 percent and 3.5 percent on general studies programmes.
Statistics Norway (SSB), StatBank table 14867, Gjennomføring i videregående opplæringFACT 41
OECD Education at a Glance 2025, Indicator A1, Table A1.2, reference year 2024, OECD average, age group 25 to 34. The overall share of 25 to 34 year olds without an upper secondary qualification fell from 15 percent in 2019 to 13 percent in 2024. OECD reports the gap reaches 8 percentage points or more in Costa Rica and Portugal, and that Bulgaria, Korea and Mexico show no gap.
“young men are more likely than young women to lack an upper secondary qualification, with an OECD average of 14% for young men and 11% for young women”
OECD, Education at a Glance 2025, Indicator A1 (To what level have adults studied?)FACT 42
OECD Education at a Glance 2025, Indicator A3, reference year 2024, OECD average, age group 25 to 34. Unemployment rates are from Table A3.4: 13 percent for those with below upper secondary attainment, 7 percent for those whose highest level is upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary, and 5 percent for those with tertiary education. Employment rates for the same age group, reported against Table A3.1 and Table A3.2, were 60 percent for below upper secondary, 79 percent for upper secondary, and 87 percent for tertiary. Scope caution: within the below upper secondary group the employment rate is 71 percent for young men and 46 percent for young women (Table A3.2), so the disadvantage of that group is not itself a male disadvantage. The male-relevant point is that men are over-represented in the group, at 14 percent against 11 percent (Indicator A1, Table A1.2).
“the unemployment rate for younger adults with below upper secondary attainment is 13%, almost twice as high as for those with upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary attainment (7%)”
OECD, The ABC of Gender Equality in Education: Aptitude, Behaviour, Confidence, published March 2015, using PISA 2012 data on 15 year old students, OECD country average, Figure 1.2 and Table 1.8. The report also states that six out of ten students who were low achievers in all three subjects were boys, and describes the gap as 4 percentage points. Scope caution: the underlying survey wave is 2012, so this must always be cited as a 2012 measurement published in 2015, not as a current figure.
“Across OECD countries in 2012, 14% of boys and 9% of girls did not attain the PISA baseline level of proficiency in any of the three core subjects.”
Myhr, Haugan, Lillefjell and Halvorsen, BMC Public Health 2018;18:682, DOI 10.1186/s12889-018-5551-1. Registry study on a 30 percent random sample, stratified by age, gender and municipality of residence, of the Norwegian population aged 21 to 40 in 2010 (N = 395,514), drawn from Statistics Norway's FD-trygd event database and linked to the National Education Database. After excluding 527 people entitled to a disability pension due to cognitive abnormalities and cases without complete data, the analysis sample was N = 350,699, which the authors report as 88.7 percent of eligible subjects. 7,065 people, 2.0 percent, were receiving a disability pension, of whom 5,876 had not completed secondary education and 52.0 percent were male; the 343,634 non-receivers are the comparison group behind the 32.2 percent figure. This is a correlation reported by the authors, not an estimated causal effect, and the education variable is not split by sex.
“At the end of 2010, a total of 7065 (2.0%) individuals were receiving DP, of which 83.2% (N = 5876) had not completed secondary education.”
One country ran a full public inquiry into boys in school. Follow what happened to it. The last two nodes are the reason this page exists at all: the global body that could have taken this up has said in its own report how little attention it gets.
NOU 2019:3 "Nye sjanser – bedre læring" (the Stoltenberg committee), delivered to the Ministry of Education 4 February 2019. Scope: enkeltvedtak om spesialundervisning in Norwegian grunnskole (compulsory school, grades 1-10), national figure. The committee's own summing-up states it is well documented that boys come out of Norwegian compulsory education worse than girls: weaker average grades, substantially more boys among those least prepared for further education, and 70 percent of special education decisions concerning boys. The committee also notes this may partly reflect a genuinely greater need among boys.
“Rundt 70 prosent av alle vedtak om spesialundervisning i grunnskolen gjelder gutter.”
NOU 2019: 3 Nye sjanser – bedre læring (Stoltenbergutvalget), KunnskapsdepartementetFACT 46
NOU 2019:3, chapter 3. Grunnskolepoeng is the average of all subject grades multiplied by 10, on a scale of 10 to 60, and is the basis for admission to upper secondary. Scope: all pupils finishing grunnskolen in Norway in 2018, national average 41.8 points. The committee states the gender gap sits between four and five points on average and varies little from year to year, equivalent to an average boy having roughly seven to nine subject grades on his leaving certificate lower than an average girl. The committee separately notes 6.3 percent of boys and 4.6 percent of girls lack grunnskolepoeng entirely.
“Gjennomsnittlig antall grunnskolepoeng for alle elever var 41,8 i 2018, og jentene fikk 4,6 flere grunnskolepoeng enn guttene.”
NOU 2019: 3 Nye sjanser – bedre læring (Stoltenbergutvalget), KunnskapsdepartementetFACT 47
Documented in NOU 2024:8 "Likestillingens neste steg" (the Mannsutvalget), delivered 24 April 2024, section 11.3.2. It records that the proposal was picked up in Meld. St. 6 (2019-2020) "Tett pa", where one measure was to let municipalities trial new models of flexible school start; the Directorate for Education invited municipalities, and Trondheim and Kristiansand registered interest. Norway had 356 municipalities when the invitation went out (357 since 1 January 2024). Both municipalities chose to run the trial within existing rules, in a substantially different way from the committee's proposal, and therefore do not report results to national education authorities. No changes to the rules on flexible school start were adopted in the new Education Act.
“Det er ikke vedtatt endringer i reglene for fleksibel skolestart i ny opplæringslov.”
NOU 2024: 8 Likestillingens neste steg (Mannsutvalget), Kultur- og likestillingsdepartementetFACT 48
NOU 2019:3 recommended creating a national register of person-identifiable longitudinal data for kindergarten and compulsory education, administered by Statistics Norway. Prop. 131 L (2024-2025), presented by the Ministry of Education on 10 April 2025, cites NOU 2019:3 explicitly as background. The Storting adopted the change on 27 May 2025 (lovvedtak 69, 2024-2025), amending opplaeringslova, privatskolelova and barnehageloven to permit individual-level registers, with data restricted to statistics and research and barred from use in individual administrative decisions. The enacted registers sit with the Directorate for Education, with Statistics Norway collecting the data to produce official statistics, rather than the Statistics Norway-administered register the committee had recommended. Timeline: recommended February 2019, enacted May 2025.
“Stoltenbergutvalget anbefalte i NOU 2019: 3 Nye sjanser – bedre læring – Kjønnsforskjeller i skoleprestasjoner og utdanningsløp at det blir opprettet et nasjonalt register over barn i barnehager og grunnskoler”
Prop. 131 L (2024–2025), Kunnskapsdepartementet; Stortinget lovvedtak 69 (2024–2025)FACT 49
UNESCO, "Leave no child behind: global report on boys' disengagement from education" (2022), key messages section, drawing on quantitative evidence from over 140 countries. Scope: countries where a gender difference in upper secondary enrolment exists, not all countries. The same report separately records that boys are more likely than girls to repeat primary grades in 130 of 142 countries with data, and that 2019 tertiary gender parity index data showed 88 men enrolled for every 100 women globally.
“Where there are gender differences in enrolment in upper secondary education, 73 countries see this at boys' disadvantage, while in 48 countries this is at girls' disadvantage.”
UNESCO, Leave no child behind: global report on boys' disengagement from educationFACT 50
UNESCO, "Leave no child behind" (2022), chapter on policy responses. The report adds that programmes and initiatives addressing boys' disengagement remain few, that system-level gender-specific policies targeting boys are even more scarce, and that the policies which do exist are mostly in high-income countries, with only a few low- and middle-income countries having specific policies even where disparities at boys' expense are severe. This is a UNESCO research report, not a normative instrument or a binding commitment by states.
“With only a few notable exceptions, very little policy attention has been given to gender disparities in education outcomes at boys' expense.”
UNESCO, Leave no child behind: global report on boys' disengagement from educationFACT 51
Strategic guidance letter from Secretary of State Gavin Williamson to the Office for Students, dated February 2021 (published by OfS as 8 February 2021), issued under section 2 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, which the OfS must have regard to rather than a binding direction. The letter's wording is a request: the Secretary of State says he would like the OfS to continue to consider broader factors, and that this should include a focus on white boys on free school meals. Scope: access and participation in higher education in England. The Education Committee's June 2021 report recommended at recommendation 20 that the OfS report to Parliament within a year on progress against this request; the Government response of October 2021 (CP 524) pointed to the OfS's existing annual report, annual monitoring and access and participation dashboard rather than committing to a dedicated report on this group. CP 524 paragraph 124 paraphrases the group as "white working-class boys"; the letter's own wording is narrower.
“This should include a focus on white boys on free school meals who are currently the least likely group to progress to higher education.”
Secretary of State for Education, Guidance to the Office for Students, February 2021FACT 52
Every claim below is one we found in circulation, checked, and will not make. Several of them would have made this page louder. The reading-gap literature is strong enough that it does not need help, and a single unsupported number here would be used to discredit every sourced one above it.
This page says where its evidence is weak, and it will keep doing that. But thin evidence and a settled question are not the same thing. The UN's own indicator on sexual violence in childhood is written to cover young women and men alike, and the comparable data actually collected covers about 68 low- and middle-income countries for women and about 12 for men, with high-income countries outside the count for both. The indicator excluded nobody. The measuring did.
So where you read here that the research is thin, read it as a description of what has been funded and counted, not as a verdict on what is happening to men and boys. Then ask the question this campaign exists to ask: who was assigned to collect it, and what would we know by now if somebody had been?
52 claims on this subject survived the check and are published above, each with its exact figure, its scope and its primary source.
26 more were checked and thrown out.
The discarded ones are not printed here, because repeating a false claim in order to reject it mostly just repeats it. They are not hidden either: every one travels with the evidence base in facts.json, with the reason it failed, so what we threw away can be audited as easily as what we kept.
If you have seen this campaign quoted with a number that is not on this page, that is the first place to look.
A gap this well measured, for this long, with nobody assigned to close it.
— voices so far · one tap, anonymous, no signup
Independent research by Mikal Steen Monslaup, supported by Manderådet and MannsForum · unformentoo.org