On 13 March 2026 (US Eastern Time), during the 70th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70), the thematic forum “Digital Power of Civil Society: NGOs Advancing Women’s Access to Justice,” hosted by the Pacific Rim Institute for Development and Education (U.N.P.R.I.D.E.), was held successfully online. Centred on harnessing digital technology to protect women’s rights, the forum gathered diverse voices from academia, education, law, public welfare and youth, with in-depth discussion of fair employment, educational empowerment, digital rights protection and cultural empowerment — bringing fresh momentum to the global cause of women’s rights.
Yang Jiling, Director of the UN New York Liaison Office, gave the welcome address, stressing that CSW70 is a central platform for global gender-equality governance, that digital technology offers NGOs a new path to empower women and advance judicial fairness, and that civil-society participation is key to achieving gender equality. She encouraged NGOs worldwide to build cross-sector cooperation networks so that every woman can access justice equally, helping to shape a global governance system for gender equality.
Dr. Lu Xian, principal of the Australian International School Shanghai, noted that education is a key to breaking gender bias and that the gender gap in STEM remains a major obstacle to women’s advancement. Citing detailed data, she observed that over the past decade the share of Chinese women in STEM majors has risen markedly (from 28% to 37% at undergraduate level), yet women still make up under 30% in fields such as engineering and computing; meanwhile, fathers’ participation in school communication at the high-school stage nearly doubled over the decade (from 20%–25% to 35%–45%), signalling a shift in the gender division of family education. She called for education-based, home–school collaboration to keep advancing women in STEM.
Nie Jingping spoke on AI, sensing technology and the empowerment of women in STEM. Recalling her studies at Smith College (one of the largest women’s colleges in the United States), she said that growing up in an environment that encouraged women to lead and innovate profoundly shaped her research and educational philosophy. She introduced an AI-driven sensing system developed by her team — supporting health and wellbeing through mobile devices and wearable sensors — and stressed that such systems must be private, accessible and scalable. Meaningful technology, she argued, is not only about innovation itself but about who takes part in creating it; sharing her experience mentoring women students from self-doubt to confident researchers, she called for inclusive mentorship, responsible technology development and civil-society partnership to ensure digital innovation serves gender equality.
Ms. Wu Danqing, CHRO for China at Rucker Sports Group, focused on workplace discrimination related to marriage and childbirth. She outlined five core barriers — including hiring discrimination and the erosion of rights during the “three special periods” (pregnancy, maternity and nursing) — set out the relevant provisions of the Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests, and proposed targeted solutions such as eliminating hiring discrimination, enforcing protection during the three periods and establishing a social mechanism to share the costs of marriage and childbirth, calling for firm legal and institutional safeguards to root out workplace injustice and give women equal employment opportunities.
Attorney Maya Lepetit shared how, through her transition from legal practitioner to religious leader, she has steadfastly upheld justice for women. She noted that only about 20% of pastors in the United States are women, a figure that once fell as low as 2% in evangelical churches. By reinterpreting often-misused scripture — for example, that “wives submit to your husbands” actually derives from the fuller teaching of “submit to one another” — she challenged patriarchal religious readings; she also observed that the internet has greatly expanded pastors’ access to theological resources, and that the spread of information is itself a form of empowerment. Any action that connects women with resources and challenges inequality, she argued — whether legal aid, educational support or contesting unjust ideas and policies — contributes to justice for women.
Jin Zheling, a graduate student at Shanghai Normal University, found through fieldwork that street dance such as jazz dance gives young women space to reshape their body image and gain confidence, yet the commercialisation of digital platforms exposes them to objectification and online harassment. She argued that the street-dance arena is an important site for women to negotiate their rights, calling for better labour protection in studios and stronger platform governance to safeguard women’s bodily autonomy and lawful rights, so that street dance becomes a cultural force that empowers women.
Jia Shuyi, a master’s student in anthropology, focused on the difficulties ethnic-minority women face in accessing justice, noting their double disadvantage of gender and ethnicity, weak legal awareness and geographic isolation. She proposed that NGOs use digital technology to build three systems — multilingual legal education, online legal aid and digital peer support — to bridge the “last mile” of judicial justice for ethnic-minority women so that each may enjoy equal legal protection.
Drawing on her own experience, Liu Yiling revealed how the absence of sex education leads women to stay silent when they are harmed. Sharing her sex-education volunteer teaching in Jintang, Sichuan, she stressed that education is the first line of defence for women’s justice and called for incorporating gender education into the national education system, so that systematic education helps women understand their rights, speak up bravely, break the culture of silence and build the first line of self-protection.
Lola Anne Guan-Williams, a Year 10 student at The British International School Shanghai, pointed out that hundreds of millions of women worldwide still face discrimination and injustice rooted in deep structural bias. The digital age, she stressed, brings opportunities for advocacy as well as new challenges such as algorithmic bias; she called for a gender-equality system with no exceptions and no exclusion, so that every woman — regardless of race or identity — enjoys equal rights and dignity, advancing global gender equality on digital wings.
Dr. Heather White, a research specialist at General Motors, used her own path to illustrate how women on non-traditional educational routes break stereotypes and achieve academic and professional growth. The essence of education, she stressed, is empowerment, and diverse educational models offer women individualised paths to grow; she called for breaking the constraints of social expectation and rigid educational forms, giving women full support to unleash their potential.
Wu Yinxuan, a student at Yew Chung International School of Hong Kong, found through data analysis and her own observation that global climate governance leans heavily on hardware investment while severely undervaluing girls’ education — a “low-cost, high-return” foundational solution. In resource-poor regions, she noted, the marginal cost of cutting emissions by universalising girls’ education is just US$10 per tonne of CO₂, outperforming even rooftop solar and electric vehicles, because education delays marriage and childbirth, optimises population structure, empowers women to farm scientifically and cut emissions (as in agricultural community practice near Xi’an) and strengthens disaster-resilience. With 130 million girls out of school worldwide, she urged global decision-makers to recognise these powerful potential climate actors: rather than waiting for technology to renew itself, unlock the vast emissions-reduction power of human capital through education.
Zheng Shuyin, a student at Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School, focused on women’s intellectual-property protection. Using Taylor Swift’s re-recorded albums as an entry point, she exposed structural gender bias in the IP system — women are often seen as lacking innovative ability, and creative fields led by women (such as knitting patterns) have long been excluded from IP protection. Women also face fewer financing opportunities, limited licensing deals and scarce professional resources, she noted, calling on NGOs to drive legal reform and cultivate the next generation of women creators and technologists, and stressing that in an age dominated by AI and digital technology, IP protection is vital to women’s rights.
In closing remarks, Dr. Nate Murray of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor affirmed the forum’s diverse perspectives and practical value, stressing that digital technology is a core tool for advancing women’s access to justice but must be combined with institutional safeguards, community support and individual action to achieve gender equality. He called on NGOs, governments and businesses worldwide to act in concert to build a global cooperation network for the digital empowerment of women’s rights.
The forum was moderated by Dr. Liu Suwei of Northwestern University. Reviewing its core themes, she stressed that the forum offered Chinese wisdom and solutions for protecting women’s rights in the digital age, noting that justice for women requires technological empowerment, legal safeguards, educational empowerment and individual action; she called for using the forum as an opportunity to deepen global cooperation, so that digital technology safeguards women’s rights and helps build a bright future of gender equality.
This CSW70 P.R.I.D.E. forum, with digital technology as its thread, created a high-level platform for global exchange on women’s rights. From legal advocacy to educational empowerment, from cultural empowerment to youth voices, the speakers systematically explored — through diverse perspectives and practical cases — the pathways and methods for women’s access to justice in the digital age, revealing the structural challenges of women’s-rights protection today while proposing workable, replicable solutions.
The forum’s success demonstrated not only China’s practice and reflection in protecting women’s rights but also the responsibility borne by the Pacific Rim Institute for Development and Education (U.N.P.R.I.D.E.) — as an NGO in ECOSOC Special Consultative Status — in advancing global gender equality. Going forward, P.R.I.D.E. will continue to cultivate the field of women’s rights, build more international exchange and cooperation mechanisms on the UN platform, and, on digital wings, help women’s-rights protection take root, striving tirelessly toward global gender equality and the Sustainable Development Goals.
The speakers firmly believe that women are a central force in shaping the future; only through solidarity and sustained action can gender bias be broken and a truly equal, just and inclusive world be built — one in which every woman is free to flourish and move toward the light.
Source: Pacific Rim Institute for Development and Education (P.R.I.D.E.)
