Beijing. According news agency Reuter, "More than 30 percent of China's women are illiterate, with fewer girls going to school than boys because of traditional prejudices, the Guangming Daily said Wednesday. There were 2.1 million girls absent from school in 1992, or two-thirds of all absentees, the newspaper said, quoting experts at a recent conference. School absenteeism among girls in the more remote western and southern provinces of Tibet, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai and Guizhou was a particularly serious problem, the newspaper said. It estimated the illiteracy rate among women at 30 percent. That compared with a recent government survey that showed the total number of illiterates in China over the age of 15 accounted for 15.5 percent of the population in 1993, down from 16.1 percent in 1990, the newspaper said. A further indicator of the inequality of education between men and women in China was that only 1.1 percent of women graduate from college and most women in the workforce have only a primary school e

ducation. Chinese authorities have said they want to wipe out illiteracy among people aged 15 to 40 by the year 2000. The criterion for literacy varies depending on where one lives knowledge of 2,000 Chinese characters for urban dwellers and 1,500 characters for rural residents. More than 90 percent of China's illiterate people live in the countryside. (EuroTibet News nr.5)