Commitments to Generation Equality Forum

• increase access for girls and women to digital skills and competencies, STI and STEM education opportunities, including engineering, computer science and informatics, to ensure gender equality in emerging STI fields such as nanotechnologies, engineering for the SDGs and Artificial Intelligence;
• provide access to STEM education to at least 2000 girls/year in Africa through hands on micro-science;
• enable at least 2000 women physicists/year globally under a programme ‘physics without borders’ to take leadership roles among relevant university research programmes;
• advance the scientific careers of young women scientists and give visibility to their scientific work in all related fields of technology and innovation through its partnership with L’Oréal-UNESCO “Women in Science Programme” and the Organization for Women Scientists in Developing Countries;
• support member States to review their national STEM education systems from a gender perspective; develop, monitor and evaluate gender transformative STI policies and systems, particularly in Africa;
• support Member States to close the digital gender divide, promote universal digital literacy, and ethical use of AI that is free of gender bias and stereotypes through the implementation of the Global Recommendation on the Ethics of Al;
• UNESCO will invest 24 million USD.

• provide funding for PhD researchers from developing countries through UNESCO’s Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD). OWSD also grants awards to early career fellows such as the OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early Career Women Scientists.

• promote the scientific careers of young women scientists and give visibility to their work through the annual UNESCO-L'Oréal for Women in Science Award that recognized the achievements of 5 laureates and 15 Rising Talents in 2020 and in 2021. The programme is enriched by National and Regional Young Talents chapters implemented around the world with the support of UNESCO National Commissions and Field Offices.
• give visibility to the scientific research of women through thematic exhibitions, and documentary films projects such as VISIONS, a film project of UNESCO’s Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World with women scientists in Cameroon, Guatemala, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

• support Member States to review national STEM education systems with particular attention to gender transformative and inclusive policies and strategies, including national STI policies
• implement a Flagship Programme on Women and Artificial Intelligence to promote gender bias free AI and gender equality in digital technologies in line with the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. A road map to provide evidence-based guidance to AI developers and regulators will be developed with a particular emphasis on fighting gender bias. A policy network to ensure that digital technologies and AI fully contribute to achieving gender equality will be established to support the implementation of this roadmap as well as to promote opportunities for the participation of girls and women in AI education programmes, provide support for female entrepreneurship as well as advocacy activities to fight gender stereotyping in AI.

• target women scientists through the Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme for Skills Building in Sustainability Science of UNESCO’s World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in the developing world (TWAS). In 2021, a Gender Advisory Committee for the TWAS was created to promote gender equality.
• provide women physicists with research grants and support their active involvement and leadership roles in university research programmes through the “Physics without Borders” programme
• create a critical mass of science teachers trained in gender responsive teaching of STEM subjects
• provide STEM mentorship programmes for high school girls to nurture their interest in the sciences through STEM role models as well as provide courses in coding, robotics and AI (in partnership with Google, Microsoft, Airtel and Huawei)

• UNESCO Science Report (2021) analysing the implications for women of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, entitled To be smart, the digital revolution will need to be inclusive.
• UNESCO World Engineering Report (2021) with data indicating the decline in enrolment of girls in the natural sciences and engineering course in schools and universities as well as the lack of women engineers in universities
• Artificial Intelligence and Gender Equality: Key findings of UNESCO’s Global Dialogue (2020)
• I’d Blush if I could: Closing Gender Divides in Digital Skills through Education’ (2019)

• expand decent work and employment for women working in formal and informal creative economies in Africa through the implementation of a business accelerator programme to increase the number of creative industry enterprises owned and led by women in Africa;
• on a policy level, provide technical assistance to African countries to introduce gender responsive social protection measures to alleviate the impact of COVID-19 and similar economic shocks on the creative industries in Africa and especially on women artists (in accordance with their obligations under the 1980 Recommendation on the Status of the Artists and the UNESCO 2005 Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions);
• develop, promote, and campaign for women’s freedom to create, free of violence, sexism and sexual harassment in the creative industries in Africa;
• UNESCO will invest 5 USD.

• enhance the visibility of women artists and cultural professionals, create space for networking and improve their access to markets, notably in the film, music and digital sectors through major cultural events, support for the mobility of women artists and digital campaigns.  

Examples of past and relevant advocacy actions include Jazz Women in Africa (launched in 2021), The Voice of the Resilient: Women Creators from West Africa (launched in 2020) ; #WeAreYennenga (launched in 2019 at FESPACO to address violence against women in the African film industry); Dakar Declaration on Gender Equality in Music, Launch of the ResiliArt movement and gender-focused debates around UNESCO’s publications on gender and creativity.

• position gender equality and diversity of cultural expressions firmly on the political agenda
• promote multistakeholder dialogue and the collection of sex-disaggregated data to support the design and implementation of gender transformative policies and measures for creativity
• provide technical assistance and peer-to-peer learning mechanisms to effectively reduce the gender divide in the creative industries, notably in the digital environment

• create mentoring and training schemes supporting women artists and cultural professionals to promote gender equality in the culture and creative sectors and combat horizontal and vertical discriminations, notably in Africa

Examples of past and relevant examples: Nara Residency for Young African Women Filmmakers established with Japanese film director Naomi Kawase, Women's Creative Entrepreneurship in Africa, starting with a pilot diploma programme to provide women with business, financial and communication skills in Senegal, ResiliArt Accelerator pilot project in Zimbabwe.

• Culture & Working Conditions for Artists with a chapter on economic rights and social protection measures for women artists (2019, 2023)
• Cultural and Creative Industries In the Face of COVID-19: An Economic Impact Outlook (2021)
• Gender & Creativity: Progress on the Precipice (2021)
• Re|Shaping Cultural Policies (2015, 2018, 2022)
• Policy Monitoring Platform

• reach 28 million learners in 80 countries with quality gender-transformative teaching and learning that promotes gender equality;
• hold countries to account on their commitments to gender equality in and through education in our role as the officially recognised source for cross-nationally comparative data on SDG 4 and through annual in-depth analyses of trends and strategies to address gender disparities in education;
• monitor the status of 195 countries’ legal frameworks on girls’ and women’s education and support national legal and policy reforms and sector plans to ensure girls’ and women’s right to education;
• lead global coordination to support girls’ education in the wake of COVID-19 through UNESCO’s Global Education Coalition’s Gender Flagship;
• UNESCO will invest 30 million USD.

• strengthen education systems to be gender-transformative and promote gender equality and empower girls and women through education for a better life and future.

• work with media and other partners to lead global, regional and national-level advocacy, awareness-raising and the delivery of high-impact and gender-transformative messages for strategic action, including through UNESCO’s Keeping Girls in the Picture global campaign which has already reached over 360 million people.
• co-convene with UN Women the Global Working Group to End School-Related Gender-Based Violence, to generate knowledge and standards, and undertake joint evidencebased advocacy.
• recognise and award outstanding and innovative practice and leverage learning and action through the UNESCO Prize for Girls’ and Women’s Education.

• support national partners to establish better legal, policy and planning frameworks to advance girls’ and women’s right to education.
• provide technical assistance to national partners to formulate, implement and monitor gender-responsive education sector plans and budgets, including through the Gender at the Centre Initiative, supporting 8 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
• lead efforts to support planning that considers the gender dimensions of COVID-19 school closures and catalyse cooperation, including through the Global Education Coalition’s Gender Flagship’s and our Building Back Equal: Girls’ Back to School Guide.

• through the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, lead the global monitoring of progress towards SDG 4, and support greater accountability for commitments to gender equality in and through education.
• promote the integration of evidence-based curriculum content on prevention of gender-based violence in 80 countries, and invest in training of teachers notably through our landmark Our Rights, Our Lives, Our Future (O3) programme in 33 countries in sub-Saharan Africa where 1 million teachers will be reached by 2026.
• support national partners to address gender gaps in educational choice and achievement, particularly in technical and vocational education and training and STEM in over 30 countries.

• publish annual in-depth analyses of trends and strategies to address gender disparities in and through education through the Global Education Monitoring Report’s Gender Reports
• analyse, map, monitor and serve as the global clearinghouse for internationally comparable data on legislation to on girls’ and women’s education through Her Atlas, which aims to cover 195 countries.
• undertake forward-looking quantitative and qualitative research to better understand threats to gender equality in education including forthcoming research on the gender dimensions of COVID-19 school closures.