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Discrepancies exist between males and females in literacy and educational attainment in important career fields throughout the world. Data were obtained on five world regions (Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Europe and North America) from the "Handbook of International Data on Women" (Boulding, 1976), in which data on literacy; enrollment in literacy classes; and the number of graduates in education, law, social sciences, engineering, and agriculture were analyzed. Women are highly overrepresented in the illiterate population of the world, yet are underrepresented in literacy training courses. Women are most highly represented among graduates in education; worldwide, 50 percent of such graduates are women. Although the social sciences represent the next most highly "female" field of specialization, women are equally represented or overrepresented in only 14 percent of the nations studied. Women's representation decreases drastically in the fields of agriculture, law, and engineering. They are most highly represented in law and engineering in Europe and North Africa, education and social sciences in Latin America, and agricultural sciences in Africa. The study indicates that women's limited educational opportunities limit their advancement in many areas of life throughout the world. (KC)

A cross-national analysis reveals that women's status in contemporary society must be considered as a multidimensional phenomenon and that no one isolated factor best explains women's overall position. Using data from "The Handbook of International Data on Women" (Boulding and others, 1976), and from United Nations documents, a model to reflect women's position in the political, economic, educational, and family spheres was constructed. Independent variables included each nation's population size, annual rate of population increase, per capita gross national product (GNP), annual growth of GNP per capita, level of modernity and economic development, and degree of governmental coerciveness. Results indicate that women's status is best viewed as two-dimensional. One dimension is composed of women's political, educational, and family status, which are highly and positively intercorrelated. The second dimension is women's position in the economic sphere, which is independent of status in any of the other spheres. Rapid population growth is related to low status for women in the political sphere. High levels of economic status for women are related to high levels of economic development. Women's educational position may be predicted by a nation's level of development and modernity. Generally, a high annual rate of population increase is negatively related to women's social status. (KC)