Generation Equality

UN Women’s five-year Generation Equality campaign (2021-2026) promotes the rights of women and girls and gender equality globally. In particular, the aim is to accelerate the achievement of those gender equality goals that have seen slow progress internationally. Finland has a leading role in the Action Coalition on Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality.

Coordinated by UN Women, the campaign brings together states, companies, UN agencies, civil society, foundations and youth representatives. The background work for the campaign began in 2020, the year that marked the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action. The campaign was initiated by Mexico and France, and it was launched at a high-level forum in Paris in 2021.

Gender equality is one of Finland’s foreign policy priorities. Finland has provided both political and financial support to UN Women and promoted women’s rights and gender equality in the organisation’s Executive Board for a long time. The Generation Equality campaign offers Finland an opportunity to reinforce its role as a frontrunner in advancing gender equality.

Finland wants to close the gender digital divides. Women and girls must fully benefit from the opportunities provided by technology.

Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavio.

Hundreds of policies, programmes, advocacy measures and new partnerships benefiting millions of women and girls worldwide have been established or developed as part of the Generation Equality campaign.

Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavio has emphasised Finland’s strong and long-term commitment to promoting gender equality and supporting UN Women. In line with its leading role, Finland is actively promoting work to close the gender digital divides[LK1] , whether it is a question of digital connectivity, skills, or study and work opportunities. At the UN Summit of the Future in 2024, Minister Tavio emphasised that a key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals is to integrate gender equality into the technology and innovation sector.

Campaign themes

The Generation Equality campaign is composed of six Action Coalitions that each focus on a different theme to promote gender equality globally.

The themes are:

• Gender-based Violence
• Economic Justice and Rights
• Bodily Autonomy and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR)
• Feminist Action for Climate Justice
• Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality
• Feminist Movements and Leadership

Intersectionality, which refers to factors affecting the social position of individuals alongside gender, is a crosscutting theme in the work of each Action Coalition. This means considering other factors besides gender that affect the social status of individuals. In their work, the Action Coalitions pay special attention to young women and girls.  The campaign includes a Compact on Women, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action in addition to the Action Coalitions.

 

 

Finland has a leading role

Finland will continue as a co-leader of the Generation Equality campaign’s Action Coalition on Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality in line with the Government Report on International Economic Relations and Development Cooperation adopted in July 2024. Finland is leading the Action Coalition together with Tunisia, Armenia, Chile and Rwanda. The Generation Equality Forum is based on a multi-stakeholder approach, which means that each Action Coalition is led together by companies, foundations and civil society representatives. Other leaders of the Action Coalition on Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality are the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Microsoft and Koç Holding, the Rockefeller Foundation, the <A+> Alliance network, and the organisations Global Fund for Women, Social Builder and Digital Grassroots.

Finland’s leading role in the Action Coalition is a natural extension of our long-term national and international gender equality and development policy priorities. Gender equality, the rights of women and girls, and digitalisation are key themes in Finland’s foreign policy and development policy. Finland has a global reputation as a leading country in gender equality, education, technology and innovation. In line with its priorities for an international technology policy (2025), Finland supports the full and meaningful participation of women and girls in the digital transformation, takes gender equality into account in its activities and funding related to digitalisation, and works to eradicate gender-based online violence.

When used correctly, technology and innovation can promote gender equality. Technology can create new opportunities for education, employment and participation for different people. Gender equality can be promoted effectively when technology and innovation are deliberately harnessed to breaking harmful gender stereotyping. However, technology also enables phenomena that undermine gender equality, such as gender-based online violence and discriminating algorithms, which must be resisted actively.

The Action Coalition on Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality focuses on four concrete goals:

• Bridging the gender gap in digital access and competencies  
• Investing in Feminist Technology and Innovation  
• Building inclusive, Transformative and Accountable Innovation Ecosystems  
• Preventing and Eliminating Online and Tech-facilitated GBV and Discrimination

Finland considers it important that the Action Coalition pay special attention to women and girls with disabilities. Finland emphasises the impact of social innovations on gender equality. 

Commitments to promote gender equality

States, private companies, UN agencies, foundations and civil society organisations have made concrete commitments towards achieving the objectives of the Action Coalition on Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality.

Finland has made thirteen commitments, nine of which focus on promoting the objectives of the Action Coalition co-led by Finland. Three of these commitments have been made in cooperation with other Coalition members (including UNICEF and D4D-hub). The commitments focus on preventing and eradicating gender-based online violence, achieving a more balanced gender distribution in science and technology and mainstreaming a gender perspective in technology investments. 

In addition, Finland has made commitments to the objectives of two other Action Coalitions, the Action Coalition on Gender-Based Violence and the Action Coalition on Bodily Autonomy and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). Finland implements its commitments to the latter by funding domestic and international civil society actors’ efforts to promote SRHR globally and through diplomacy and advocacy

in international forums. In addition, Finland is part of the climate commitment of the Nordic Council of Ministers. All commitments are listed in the Annex at the bottom of the page.

A number of Finnish organisations, companies and other actors have joined the campaign by making their own commitments. Read more about how to make a commitment here and view a list of all commitments here.

Sustainable change is effected through collaboration. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs welcomes organisations and businesses to get involved in implementing the campaign's objectives.

Outcomes of Finland’s effort to promote gender equality in technology

Finland has made commitments to financing and to policy and advocacy work, supporting activities that connect technology, innovation and gender equality. Development cooperation funding is used to support relevant activities of UN agencies and the work of international and domestic civil society organisations.

Finland’s funding has been used to create decent jobs for women that make use of new technology, to advocate digital mediation, digital safety of women human rights defenders and to promote digital literacy of women and girls in developing countries. For example, Finland provided funding to a digital safe space, Laaha, designed by UNICEF especially for girls and young women in humanitarian settings to provide them information on sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender-based violence. Finland’s support to the UN’s innovation activities helps reinforce the UN’s capacity to harness technology and innovation to promote gender equality. 

Since 2021, the Finnish development financier and impact investor Finnfund has invested USD 60 million in businesses that promote interfaces between technology & innovation and gender equality. Among other things, these businesses strengthen women's roles in the telecom industry in several African countries and increase women’s opportunities to obtain financial services via mobile devices in Africa and Asia.

Finland promotes gender equality in international forums

Finland highlights themes related to technology and gender equality in international forums, such as the UN and the EU, at various events and meetings and in communications. Finland has organised high-level events around themes including the importance of data for gender equality and addressing digital violence against women human rights defenders.

Finland also exercises influence in the EU to close the gender digital divides. EU Member States, the European Commission, the private sector, civil society and development finance institutions collaborate in a Team Europe spirit at the Digital for Development (D4D) Hub platform to foster partnerships between the EU and developing regions. The D4D Team Europe member states have jointly committed to promoting gender equality as a cross-cutting theme across D4D projects.

In addition to other efforts, the Action Coalition produced both policy and technical guidelines for placing gender equality at the heart of the Global Digital Compact negotiated by the UN. In fact, a paragraph and other entries regarding gender equality were added to the Compact in connection with its adoption at the UN Summit of the Future in 2024. The Compact was adopted with a paragraph and other entries on gender equality at the UN Summit of the Future in 2024.

Finland highlights gender equality themes domestically

Gender equality in technology is also promoted domestically in a number of ways. The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture is implementing various measures to bridge the gender divides in natural sciences, mathematics and technology. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare have addressed gender-based online violence by, among other things, providing training to relevant authorities and raising awareness of the issue. Finland, Iceland and the European Commission organised a mutual learning seminar on combatting digital forms of violence against women in Helsinki in February 2025.

The Foreign Ministry is coordinating a Generation Equality advisory group to promote gender equality in technology. The group has representatives from the public and private sectors and from civil society. UN Women Finland and Plan International Finland are coordinating a Generation Equality Youth Task Force to give young people a voice in the process.