indeed more young women than ever before are now participating in formal and higher education in the oecd and over the past decade gender gaps in educational attainment have reversed in adult men had higher tertiarylevel attainment rates than adult women but by of women across oecd countries had attained a tertiary education compared with of men among the over nonoecd countries that are part of the barro and lee dataset the average number of years that workingage adults spend in education countries rose from around two to about eight among men and from one to eight years for women