The bar chart below shows estimated world illiteracy rates by region and by gender for the last year. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

The chart illustrates an approximation of global rates of illiteracy for the previous year, categorized by region and by gender.

Overall

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, there were more women than men who suffered from the inability to read in the

last

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year.

This

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trend was consistent throughout all parts of the world, shown by all regions that had higher rates of females who were illiterate compared to males. Two areas showed very slight differences between the genders' illiteracy rates, which were Developed Countries and Latin America/Caribbean. The approximated discrepancy within these regions' rate of illiteracy should be less than 5%.

On the other hand

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, there were stark differences in the rate of inability to read between males and females who were located outside of Developed Countries and Latin America/Caribbean. The gaps were so wide for the remaining four regions, where East Asia/Oceania had a discrepancy of more than 10%, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia experienced almost a 20% difference, and the Arab States underwent a whopping gap of over 20%.