On 28 April 2026, the International Gender Champions (IGC) Secretariat dedicated its second Espresso for Equality session to a critical issue: how to embed gender equality into a rapidly evolving digital and AI governance.
Caitlin Kraft-Buchman, CEO of Women at the Table, a leading expert on AI governance and one of IGC’s three co-founders, came with a clear message: we need to act urgently, and there is an unprecedented opportunity for engagement and mobilisation. The UN-mandated World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Action Lines – with implementation frameworks currently under development - offer a rare opportunity for governments and Geneva-based actors to shape global digital rules with gender equality at their core.
The conversation, Kraft-Buchman urged, must move beyond access to digital infrastructure and women’s representation in STEM alone, rather shifting attention to who innovates, who owns digital assets and capital, who shapes technology development, and who ultimately benefits from the economic gains of digital transformation.
The stakes are high. Gender-balanced teams generate 40% more patents, and closing the digital gender gap could add $1.3 trillion to global GDP. Yet women represent just 18% of inventors on AI-related patents. Without their inclusion, AI systems are not only reinforcing inequalities across sectors from health to justice, but risk underperforming: Systems trained on incomplete data are less fit for purpose, lack in legitimacy and see reduced adoption rates among large segments of the population.
Following the expert inputs, participants explored opportunities to influence the WSIS Action Lines, discussed the scale of the challenge ahead, and assessed existing governance frameworks, such as the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention on AI and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law. The takeaway was unequivocal: embedding gender equality in digital systems is a matter of fairness as much as it is essential to building future-proof technologies.
