The OECD Forum on Gender Equality

The 2026 Forum will focus on harnessing digital transformation to advance gender equality and ensure its benefits are shared by all. Discussions will examine how digital technologies, data, and artificial intelligence are reshaping economies and societies, highlighting both opportunities for women’s empowerment and the risks of reinforcing existing inequalities.

The Forum will explore forward-looking, evidence-based policies to better align digital and gender strategies, strengthen online safety, and promote inclusive, people-centred digital transformation that supports stronger economic growth, social cohesion, and more resilient societies.

The OECD’s Contribution to Promoting Gender Equality acknowledged the need to step up action on gender equality in building resilient and inclusive societies. Indeed, while the reports on the Implementation of the OECD Gender Recommendations [C/MIN(2022)7] [C-MIN(2017)7] [DCD/DAC(2021)/51] have shown considerable progress among OECD countries, gender equality remains elusive in all countries and this has been aggravated by the recent Health, Political and Humanitarian crisis.

Additionally, the ongoing global transitions, such as green and digital shifts, pose a risk of deepening gender inequalities. This highlights the urgent need for action. However, these shifts also present an unprecedented opportunity to unlock the latent potential of gender equality for more sustainable and inclusive economies while fostering resilience. Achieving this demands a strong political will and collaboration across policy areas to discover innovative and innovative solutions.

Green and energy transitions can present significant opportunities to unlock the potential of gender equality and close gender gaps. Women can also play a significant role in accelerating the transition. Yet, they continue being underrepresented in environment-related and energy sectors. 

Women often endure the most of climate change impacts due to facing social, economic, and political barriers, while also being at increased risk of natural disaster impacts . To this end, the Forum would serve as a platform that convenes experts across relevant OECD Committees to discuss the intersections between gender and the green and energy sectors. To create gender-transformative approaches to the green and energy transition, a wide range of areas for action could be identified, including gender and climate change and disaster risk management, as well as the new opportunities offered by the green economy, sustainable consumption and production patterns, and sustainable infrastructure.

Bridging the gender digital divide can allow for inclusive and equitable digital transition. Notably, it is essential to ensure women's access to digital skills, for example by promoting the involvement of women in STEM from elementary education, including by fighting stereotypes and promoting their participation in the labour market and in technology sectors.

Addressing biases in artificial intelligence and tech innovation is also crucial to prevent perpetuating gender inequalities. To this end, the Forum highlights innovative and cross-sectoral solutions, which enable all groups in society to fully contribute and benefit from the potential offered by technologies, while ensuring their protection and mitigating risks.

The work on ensuring gender equality for inclusive transitions will be rooted in the long-standing OECD efforts to close transversal gender gaps across Member and Non-Member countries, through: 

• Enabling equal access to opportunities –closing gaps in participation, working hours and gender-balanced leadership would boost economic growth, foster more inclusive decision-making processes, with enhanced innovation and social participation. The Forum will provide a platform to intensify OECD efforts in strategic areas such as balancing work and family responsibilities, taxation policies, women’s access to and participation in green and STEM fields, employment, entrepreneurship, and public life. 

• Fighting harmful social norms and gender-based violence - harmful social norms, deep-rooted socio-cultural biases, stereotypes and discriminatory laws and practices continue to prevent societies, and women and girls specifically, from reaching their full potential. Moreover, gender-based violence and harassment in all spheres of life continue to hinder women’s empowerment. This work will aim to focus on developing solutions to better support victim/survivors of all forms of GBV, remove persistent and emerging barriers to full participation in public and private lives, in particular harmful social norms, sexual exploitation abuse and harassment, economic violence, and online harassment.

• Enhancing gender mainstreaming, government capacities and data availability – Enhanced gender mainstreaming across sectors requires leadership, expertise, monitoring and accountability mechanisms, resources, co-ordination mechanisms and gender-disaggregated and intersectional data across key policy areas. The Forum provides opportunities to exchange practices and lessons learned in strengthening institutional capacities, integrating gender considerations into policy design and implementation, and improving the availability and use of high-quality data to inform decision making in the context of major global transitions.