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As the world meets at the Generation Equality Forum, UNESCO is launching a set of concrete commitments to achieve tangible progress towards gender equality in key areas over the next five years while COVID-19 has magnified deeply rooted structural :

1. , UNESCO will continue to lead a multi-stakeholder global coalition to support girls’ education in the wake of COVID-19, reaching 28 million learners in more than 80 countries with quality gender-transformative teaching and learning that promotes gender equality;
2. , UNESCO will work to close the digital gender divide, empower women scientists, and promote the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence which is free of gender bias and sexism. UNESCO will, for example, enable 10,000 women physicists to take leadership roles and provide access to at least 10,000 girls in Africa to studies on microscience;
3. , UNESCO will work to economically empower women artists and those working in the creative industries in Africa, by improving their access to audiences, funds, social protection schemes and increasing the number of creative industries enterprises owned and led by women, while promoting women’s rights to create, free of violence, sexism, and sexual harassment.

Gender Equality is a global priority for UNESCO that cuts across its fields of competence:  education, science, culture and communication. 

Although women have been on the front lines of the crisis, they are suffering sever backlashes. In education, 767 million young women and girls were impacted by school closures and , joining the 132 million who were already out of school before the crisis struck. From the economic perspective, the recession is pushing , destroying their economic independence and making them more vulnerable to gender-based discrimination and violence.

We must ensure that progress achieved by countries around the world is sustained notably in education, where, , girls’ primary school completion rates have reached 87%, almost 20 percentage points more than 25 years ago.

Women still face all too many obstacles in science, despite the brilliant success of researchers like Kati Kariko, from Hungary, who contributed significantly to the creation of the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine against coronavirus.  UNESCO’s data shows that women make up only one out of three scientific researchers although they constitute 54% of all university graduates and bachelor’s and master’s levels and 44% of PhD students. Some 40% of university students of information and communication technologies are women. This is why UNESCO funds young women PhD researchers through its Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World in partnership with SIDA. It also provides STEM mentorship programmes for high school girls to nurture their interest in the sciences through role models and provides courses in coding, robotics and Artificial Intelligence.

UNESCO further promotes the careers of young women scientists and gives visibility to their achievements through the annual . Since 1998, more than 3,600 women scientists have been recognized, 3,500 Young Rising Talents, PhD candidates and post-doctorates, were supported through financial support and leadership training. In addition, 117 Laureates have been honored for their excellence in science, including five who have gone on to win a scientific Nobel Prize.

In the field of culture, UNESCO’s recent publication , analyses the gender gaps in the cultural and creative industries where women artists and creators continue to face unequal access to decent work, unfair remuneration, marginalization, as well as limited access to information and communication technologies.

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• Media contact: Clare O’Hagan