While the feminist movement has certainly promoted the importance of the issues attached to female education, the discussion is wide ranging and by no means narrowly defined. It may include for example, AIDS education. Universal Education, meaning state provided primary and secondary education independent of gender is not yet a global norm, even if it is assumed in most developed countries. In some Western countries, women have surpassed men at many levels of education. For example, in the United States in 2005-2006, women earned 62% of associate degrees, 58% of bachelor's degrees, 60% of master's degrees, and 50% of doctorates.
Education for women with handicaps has also improved. In 2011 Giusi Spagnolo became the first woman with Down Syndrome to graduate college in Europe.
Improving girls educational levels has been demonstrated to have clear impacts on the health and economic future of young women, which in turn improves the prospects of their entire community. In the poorest countries of the world 50% of girls do not attend secondary school. Yet,research shows that every extra years of school for girls increases their lifetime income by 15%. Improving female education, and thus the earning potential of women, improves the standard of living for their own children, as women are invest more of their income in their families than men do. Yet, many barriers to education for girls remain. In some African countries, such as Burkina Faso, girls are unlikely to attend school for such basic reasons as a lack of private latrine facilities for girls.
Higher attendance rates of high schools and university education among women, particularly in developing countries, have helped them make inroads to professional careers with better paying salaries and wages. Education increases a woman's level of health and health awareness. Furthering women's level of education and advanced training also tends to lead to later ages of initiation of sexual activity and first intercourse, later age at first marriage, and later age at first childbirth, as well as an increased likelihood to remain single, have no children, or have no formal marriage and alternatively, have increasing levels of long term partnerships. It can lead to higher rates of barrier and chemical contraceptive use, and can increase the level of resources available to women who divorce or are in a situation of domestic violence. It has been shown in addition to increase women's communication with their partners and their employers, and to improve rates of civic participation such as voting or the holding of office.
Education Reform:.
The interrelated themes of barriers to education and employment continues to form the backbone of feminist thought in the 19th century, as described, for instance by Harriet Martineau in her 1859 article in the Edinburgh Journal. Despit the changes in the economy, the positions of women in society had not greatly improved and unlike Frances Power Cobbe, Martineau did not support the emerging call for the vote for practical reasons.
Slowly the efforts of women like Davies and the Langham group started to make inroads Queen's College and Bedford College in London started to offer some education to women and by 1862 Davies was establishing a committee to persuade the universities to allow women to sit for the recently established Cambridge Local examinations, with partial success. A year later she published The Higher Education of Women. She and Bodichon founded the first higher educational institution for women, with five student, which became Girton College, Cambridge in 1873 followed by Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford in 1879
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