A Declaration for the Next Decade: Europe’s Future for Women in Digital
On 16 February, policymakers, educators, industry voices, and digital inclusion advocates gathered in a workshop with a shared purpose: to rethink Europe’s approach to gender equality in the digital world. The workshop “A Declaration for the Next Decade” under the Connecting Women in Digital project brought participants together to review the progress made since the 2019 Women in Digital (WiD) Ministerial Declaration and to help shape its 2026 update. The European Commission is urging a more ambitious, pipeline-based approach to ensure that women are supported from early education through to leadership.
Why this matter
The 2019 Declaration laid down important foundations national strategies, better media representation, monitoring mechanisms but the digital landscape has shifted dramatically. The new recommendations aim to strengthen these commitments and tackle persistent, structural barriers. Participants were divided into five break-out rooms to explore the challenges and opportunities of the new recommendations, creating a comprehensive, interconnected view of what the next decade must address.
Key highlights
Participants argued that gender stereotypes take hold long before children enter primary school. Tackling bias at pre-primary stage is essential to give girls the confidence to explore digital skills throughout their education and to equip educators with continuous, hands-on training to recognise and counter gender bias.
Participants stressed that these efforts cannot succeed without robust monitoring, calling sex-disaggregated data “essential,” though many warned of the administrative burden this may place on smaller organisations and the difficulties caused by fragmented national datasets.
Mentorship was seen as one of the most accessible and impactful tools, but attendees noted that it must be clearly targeted, inclusive of men and boys, and supported by role models who can genuinely inspire.
Families and teachers were repeatedly highlighted as crucial actors in shaping digital confidence, especially for children in vulnerable situations, underscoring the need to involve them directly in any strategy.
While reskilling and upskilling pathways for women were widely supported, participants emphasised that such measures should be universal and adapted to real workplace conditions, recognising that organisations have far more control over training environments than internal company cultures.
On the question of quotas, opinions were mixed: some argued that quotas alone are ineffective and risk negative framing, while others maintained they remain necessary corrective tools if paired with contextual measures, an important point given the difficulty many industries face in finding women for ICT positions.
What comes next
Participants agreed that the recommendations are solid, but their success depends on practical tools, clear governance, and sustained financial support to ensure they can be realistically implemented and maintained. The insights gathered during the workshop are now feeding into the next draft of the Women in Digital Declaration. Many participants expressed cautious optimism, with the right political alignment, this could be the moment to transform a set of well-meaning ambitions into a practical, actionable roadmap for Europe’s digital decade.