50.5 per cent or 1,232,800 of Mongolia's population are women. 61,300 women of them head the family. The educational achievement of women is improving year by year. To date, 11 per cent of Mongolian parliament members, 9.1 per cent of deputy ministers, 16.9 per cent of chiefs of agencies and organisations, 4.5 per cent of presidiums of Citizens' Representative Meetings of cities and aimags and 3.3 per cent of governors of aimag and districts are women. In recent years, the percentage of tertiary educated women has increased from 55.0 per cent to 65.4 per cent.
The National Programme for Advancement of Mongolian Women (NPAW) adopted by the Government in 1996 represented progress in advancing women's status in Mongolia. Also a National Programme to Satisfy Gender Equity will be implemented from 2003 until 2020 to build a comfortable environment'so that women can equally participate in social development and equally receive the fruits of social growth. As for employment, 64.5 per cent of workers in educational sector, 71.3 per cent of workers in the social welfare sector and 63 per cent of judges are women.
In secondary education,the gross enrolment rate for girls is 20.0 percent higher than for boys, while in tertiary education women now account for 70.0 percent of all students. The unemployment level of women stood at 18.2 per cent as of the 2000 population census. Mongolia has joined around 20 international agreements on Human Rights and one is the UN Convention on eliminating all forms of discrimination towards women. There are over 50 non-government women organizations in Mongolia including Ulaanbaatar women soviet, which has 85 years history.
