Unlock Women’s Digital Power Globally: Findings and an Emerging Blueprint
Women-led digital platforms, AI tools, and tech-enabled movements are becoming increasingly important infrastructure for economic participation, civic engagement, organizing, and leadership. Yet the ecosystems supporting this work remain fragmented and significantly under-resourced.
Connected Power is a year-long effort to map this emerging landscape and understand what it would take for women-led and feminist digital infrastructure to thrive. Led by Unfurl Futures in partnership with Utrecht University’s Inclusive AI Lab and FAIR SHARE of Women Leaders, the project has collaborated with more than 200 digital entrepreneurs, technology leaders, movement builders, and funders around the world to identify shared challenges and co-architect a blueprint for stronger digital ecosystems.
This session offers a first look at findings from that work before they are released publicly. Through data and stories from across the Connected Power ecosystem, participants will explore what women building digital platforms, AI tools, and organizing networks are encountering, where existing systems are falling short, and what new forms of infrastructure and investment could make a difference.
The conversation comes at a consequential moment for women’s digital futures. Closing the digital gender gap could unlock significant economic value, while digitally enabled feminist movements have demonstrated their ability to mobilize communities and influence public policy with relatively few resources. At the same time, questions of access, funding, governance, safety, and who shapes emerging technologies will influence whose voices and leadership are strengthened in the next generation of digital infrastructure.
The session will introduce an emerging $100 million blueprint for the field, but it is deliberately not a finished product. Participants will be invited to challenge its assumptions, identify what is missing, and help shape what an ecosystem designed to strengthen women’s global power and leadership could look like.
What to expect
A participatory first look at new Connected Power research, combining emerging data with stories and perspectives from technologists, platform builders, movement leaders, and others who have contributed to the project.
Participants will explore sustainable models for women-led digital infrastructure, contribute their knowledge to a live picture of the ecosystem, and help pressure-test and refine the emerging blueprint. With many of the project’s global participants, funders, and co-architects in New York, the session will also create space for connections across a field whose actors rarely have the opportunity to gather in person.
Who this is for
This session is for technologists, digital entrepreneurs, platform builders, movement leaders, funders, researchers, policymakers, and others working at the intersection of gender equity, technology, AI, democracy, economic opportunity, and digital rights.
What you will get out of it
A first look at findings from a global mapping of women-led and feminist digital infrastructure
Insights from more than 200 entrepreneurs, technology leaders, movement builders, and funders
A clearer picture of the barriers preventing women-led and feminist digital ecosystems from reaching their potential
An opportunity to shape and challenge an emerging $100 million blueprint for the field
New connections with people building, funding, and strengthening women-led digital infrastructure globally
Hosted by
Utrecht University Inclusive AI Lab