Drawing the Global Access Map 2 – Using Data to Drive Change

To close a successful year of community events, seminars and international discussion, WAHEN hosted the final Global Communities seminar of 2025 on 10 December, bringing together an online audience from across the globe.

Professor Graeme Atherton and Frances Sit shared insights from the recently published report, Drawing the Global Access Map 2: Understanding Higher Education Inequality Across the World (click here to read the report). Released on 28 October, this landmark study is the most comprehensive analysis to date of inequalities in higher education participation and attainment worldwide.

The report draws on data from over 200 countries and highlights key findings:

• Gender equality in higher education remains a global challenge, with only around a dozen countries achieving parity in access and attainment.
• In all countries where data is available, with students from higher socioeconomic groups at least twice as likely to participate and complete university compared to their peers from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
• Both gender and socioeconomic inequalities show only a moderate link with national income, indicating that cultural and policy factors play a significant role.
• While progress has been made, gains are fragile and uneven. Gender parity has worsened in many countries, and socioeconomic inequalities are only reducing in about half of those with available data.

The report calls for systematic global action to address gender disparities and improve participation and attainment for learners from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and other underrepresented groups.

Also highlighted in the seminar were success stories, with 92 countries seeing improvements in gender parity in higher education and 57 making progress in reducing inequality in higher education participation by socioeconomic background.

Joining the discussion was Dr Courtney Brown, Vice President of Impact and Planning at Lumina Foundation, which funded the research. Dr Brown reflected on the report’s impact and the changes happening internationally, saying:

“These moments of progress offer us something we all need right now, proof that change is possible when equity becomes a shared commitment instead of a side project”

The full video recording of the seminar is available here: https://youtu.be/5miUSASb70k