Locations
Our focus
Gender Equality
Overview
Gender Equality is central to UNDP's vision for human development on a healthy planet. UNDP's Strategic Plan 2026-2029 identifies Gender Equality as one of three accelerators of progress, alongside digital and AI transformation and sustainable finance. The UNDP Gender Equality Strategy 2026-2029 builds on this ambition by supporting governments to place Gender Equality at the core of political, economic and environmental decisions, with the goal of expanding development choices that work for all.
Across Asia and the Pacific, rapid urbanization, changing labor markets, digital and AI transformation, climate stress and recurrent crises are unfolding at the same time. These shifts are not gender neutral. UNDP's Regional Gender Equality Offer 2026-2029 responds through a practical 3+1 model. It brings together three signature offers focused on cities, jobs and prosperity, and digital innovation, supported by an enabling platform that strengthens institutions, expertise, financing and accountability.
These are not stand-alone interventions. They are scalable regional offers that combine diagnostics, tools, policy and institutional reform, capacity development, partnerships and implementation support. Together, they help countries expand women and men's choices, safety, leadership and economic opportunities while accelerating prosperity, effective governance, resilience, a healthy planet and responsible digital transformation.
Our work
UNDP's regional Gender Equality work focuses on three connected transformation agendas. Cities shape everyday access to safety, care, services and climate resilience. Economic systems shape whether women can enter the labor force, grow enterprises and access quality jobs. Digital and AI systems shape whether women can participate in, lead and benefit from technological change. These agendas are designed to reinforce one another. Through Safe, Inclusive and Resilient Cities, UNDP strengthens women's safety, public spaces, municipal services and institutional capacity. The Jobs, Entrepreneurship and Prosperity offer connects care, finance, enterprise and economic recovery to the systems that shape women’s economic participation. In fragile and crisis-affected settings, stronger services and recovery systems can also reinforce wider efforts to prevent and respond to gender-based violence. DIWA complements these efforts by advancing gender-responsive digital and AI governance, expanding women’s digital and AI skills and leadership, and promoting safer and more inclusive digital spaces. Within this broader agenda, UNDP links responses to technology-facilitated gender-based violence with the wider governance, justice, protection and referral systems that women rely on. The +1 enabling platform strengthens the institutions, expertise, financing and accountability needed to sustain and scale results.
With the region's urban population projected to grow by more than 50% by 2050, cities will increasingly determine whether women can move safely, access care and services, earn a livelihood and withstand climate shocks. UNDP helps city governments move from gender commitments to measurable changes in urban governance, services and infrastructure.
Our work includes
- Adapting and scaling the Gender Equality Seal for Cities, which gives city governments a two-year pathway to embed Gender Equality in planning and budgets, data and accountability, public services and municipal workplaces.
- Treating care as urban infrastructure and an investment priority. The Care Georeferencing Tool maps where care is needed, where services exist and whether people can reach them, revealing care deserts and helping cities target investment.
- Strengthening leadership capabilities for mayors, councils, planners and officials so gender-responsive planning, budgeting, service delivery and coordination can be sustained.
- Supporting climate-resilient and safe cities by examining how heat and climate-related infrastructure disruption affect women informal workers, especially those whose livelihoods depend on public and climate-exposed urban spaces.
This work supports better governed and better-informed cities, safer and more accessible urban environments, stronger care systems, better mobility choices and climate resilience that prioritizes women and vulnerable communities.
Women's economic participation is shaped by the systems around work, including care, finance, fiscal policy, regulation, markets and job quality. UNDP connects these systems so women-led MSMEs can start, grow, compete, access finance and create quality jobs.
Our work includes
- Diagnosing fiscal, regulatory and market barriers facing women-led enterprises, then simplifying business registration, licensing and tax compliance while expanding access to procurement, digitalization and higher-value markets.
- Expanding access to finance through gender-responsive financial sector reform, blended finance, guarantees, credit, investor engagement and alternative credit models, including through the Gender Equality Seal for financial institutions.
- Using care economy costing and financing tools to identify financing gaps and sustainable funding sources for affordable and quality childcare and eldercare, creating care jobs while reducing and redistributing unpaid care work.
- Putting women's entrepreneurship and quality jobs at the center of crisis recovery by connecting women-led MSMEs to markets, skills, digital onboarding, finance and opportunities in green sectors.
- Applying UNDP's Equanomics approach and tools to connect fiscal, budget and financing reform with distributional results for women.
This policy-to-finance approach is also advanced through regional partnerships on gender-responsive climate finance.
The Gender and Climate Finance Collective (GCFC), is a joint UNDP, UN Women and UNEP regional initiative that brings together governments, civil society, private sector, think-tanks, and development partners to exchange knowledge, provide guidance, and expand gender-responsive and inclusive climate-finance solutions. Through, its “strategy to scale” webinars, virtual resource centers; policy events and targeted work in countries and with partners, GCFC works to embed gender and social inclusion across climate finance reforms, planning, and implementation.
The result is more resilient economies with productive women-led enterprises, stronger access to finance and markets, greater investment in care, more quality jobs for women and more gender-responsive and inclusive climate finance.
AI and digital transformation are reshaping economies, public services and the future of work. Digital Innovation, Women and AI positions women not simply as users of technology, but as participants, innovators, leaders and decision makers who can shape its design, governance and value creation. Its transformative potential for sustainable development is immense, but not without risk. Digitalization and AI are increasingly exploited to undermine rights and constrain equal participation and influence in economic, social, and public life, with a disproportionate impact on women, girls, LGBTQIA+ persons, and ethnic minorities, globally and across Asia-Pacific. These trends reinforce structural inequalities and amplify discrimination and harmful norms, including through technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV), which has emerged as a critical manifestation of digital risk, both reflecting and intensifying power imbalances across online and offline spaces.
Our work includes
- Building the evidence needed to act through the Gender and AI Assessment Framework, which examines AI readiness and gendered effects across access, labor market participation, care, safety and decision making.
- Creating pathways from foundational digital and AI literacy to workforce participation, entrepreneurship and innovation leadership through the Women and AI Skills Accelerator, AI-enabled learning, mentorship and private sector investment.
- Strengthening gender-responsive digital and AI policy, institutional safeguards and accountable digital systems to strengthen legal and institutional responses to address digital violence so women can participate safely and influence how digital transformation is governed.
The result is trusted and gender-responsive AI governance, a stronger pipeline of women with digital and AI skills, more women in technology leadership and entrepreneurship, and safer and more inclusive digital spaces.
The three signature offers depend on the institutions behind them. The +1 enabling platform places gender expertise where decisions are made, integrates Gender Equality from programme design through implementation, and strengthens the leadership, accountability and financing needed to deliver results.
Our work includes
- Combining dedicated gender expertise with sectoral specialists and integrating gender specialists into management and decision-making structures.
- Supporting institutional transformation through the Gender Equality Seal for Development.
- Using the gender marker and gender reviews of country programmes, projects and portfolios to strengthen programme quality and accountability.
- Providing proposal development support that translates gender analysis into stronger design, costing, partnerships and resource mobilization.
- Connecting practitioners through the RBAP Community of Practice to share tested approaches and drive gender-transformative results across the region.
