As the region enters the final five years of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals, accelerating progress on women’s economic empowerment has become increasingly important for achieving inclusive and sustainable development. While progress has been made in recent decades, significant gender gaps persist in labour force participation, entrepreneurship and access to economic opportunities across the SPECA region. These challenges are particularly visible in emerging high-growth sectors, where women remain underrepresented due to gender gaps in digital literacy, limited innovation support, and restricted access to green finance and technology.

At the same time, economies in the SPECA region are undergoing rapid transformation driven by global megatrends such as digital transformation and climate change. These shifts are creating new opportunities for innovation, job creation and sustainable growth, while also requiring targeted skills development, innovation support and gender-responsive policies to ensure that women can fully participate in and benefit from these transitions. Strengthening women’s participation in digital and green economies is therefore critical not only for advancing gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, but also for building resilient, inclusive and sustainable economies in the region.

These priorities have been consistently reflected in regional policy dialogues and ESCAP initiatives. For example, the Asia-Pacific Regional Consultation on the sixty-sixth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66) highlighted the importance of integrating gender perspectives into climate change, environmental sustainability and disaster risk reduction policies, and called for stronger gender-responsive approaches to support women’s economic resilience. Similarly, the seventy-ninth session of the Commission emphasized the need to accelerate climate action and support the transition to low-carbon economies through regional cooperation and innovation.

ESCAP has also supported capacity-building initiatives to strengthen women’s participation in the digital economy. The Women ICT Frontier Initiative (WIFI), implemented by the Asian and Pacific Training Centre for ICT for Development (APCICT), provides training and policy support to women entrepreneurs and government officials across the region to enhance digital skills, promote entrepreneurship and build enabling policy environments for inclusive digital transformation. Such initiatives demonstrate the growing importance of investing in women’s participation in digital and green economies as pathways to innovation, resilience and sustainable development.

In this context, the 2026 session of the SPECA Working Group on Gender and SDGs will focus on “Advancing women’s economic empowerment in the context of digital and green economies.” The meeting will provide a platform for participating countries and stakeholders to exchange experiences, share good practices and identify policy actions to support women’s participation in digital transformation and green development.