2025年亚太经合组织妇女与经济报告

APEC Women and the Economy Dashboard 2025 Summary

Core Content

The APEC Women and the Economy Dashboard 2025 provides an updated analysis of women's economic participation across APEC economies, highlighting both progress and persistent challenges. The report emphasizes the need for urgent action to address systemic gender inequality and promote women's full, equal, and meaningful participation in economic activities.

Key Findings

• Uneven Progress: While some indicators show improvement, many remain stagnant or have only seen incremental changes.
• Access to Finance and Technology: Women have made strides in financial inclusion and digital access, with 78% of women in APEC being internet users in 2022.
• Persistent Gaps:
  • Wage Inequality: Women earn 70% of what men earn on average.
  • Legal Protection: Only 10 APEC economies have laws prohibiting sex-based discrimination in credit access.
  • Unpaid Work: Women bear a disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic responsibilities, which limits their opportunities for paid work, education, and entrepreneurship.
  • Labor Force Participation: Female labor force participation remains below 60%, with a slight decline during the pandemic and slow recovery.
  • Leadership Representation: Women hold around 28% of parliamentary seats and 22% of ministerial positions, with low private sector leadership representation.
  • STEM Participation: Women's participation in technical and vocational training has declined, and their involvement in STEM fields remains low at an estimated average of below 30%.
  • Health and Safety: While health outcomes have improved, the prevalence of diabetes among women has increased, and legal frameworks against violence and harassment remain inconsistent across APEC.

Scope of the Dashboard

• Purpose: To track women's economic participation and highlight data and policy gaps.
• Indicators: The Dashboard is based on five priority pillars:
  1. Access to capital and assets
  2. Access to markets
  3. Skills, capacity-building and health
  4. Leadership, voice and agency
  5. Innovation and technology
• Data Sources: International organizations such as ILO, ITU, IPU, OECD, UN, WB, WEF, and WHO.
• Updates: The 2025 Dashboard includes 92 indicators, with some new additions like women's mortality rate from non-communicable diseases (NCD) and prevalence of diabetes among adult females. Data gaps persist, particularly on unpaid work and women's participation in R&D.

Main Results by Priority Areas

Pillar 1: Access to Capital and Assets

• Financial Inclusion: Women's formal account ownership increased to 82% in 2021 from 59% a decade earlier.
• Credit Access: Only 10 APEC economies have laws against sex-based credit discrimination.
• Startup Ecosystem: Women-led startups are underrepresented and underfunded, receiving less than half the funding of male-led startups on average.
• Challenges: Women face biases in investment decisions, limited access to networks and mentorship, and underrepresentation in STEM fields.
• Pathways to Inclusion: Initiatives such as women-focused smart investing, capacity-building programs, and STEM education are being implemented to support women entrepreneurs.

Pillar 2: Access to Markets

• Wage Equality: Women's wages have increased to 70% of men's, but progress is slow.
• Equal Pay Laws: Only 11 APEC economies have laws mandating equal pay for equal work.
• Industry Restrictions: Six economies still restrict women from working in certain industries, while five prohibit them from hazardous jobs.
• Unpaid Work: Women account for a higher proportion of contributing family members, indicating a heavier burden of unpaid work.
• Trade Barriers: Women entrepreneurs face challenges in accessing trade finance and international markets, with trade infrastructure quality improving only marginally.

Pillar 3: Skills, Capacity-Building and Health

• Education: Women have improved in literacy and enrollment in primary, secondary, and tertiary education.
• Technical Training: Female participation in technical and vocational programs has declined, limiting access to high-paying, male-dominated jobs.
• Health Outcomes: Mortality rates from NCD and maternal mortality have decreased, but diabetes prevalence has increased.
• Legal Protection: Laws against domestic violence and sexual harassment have expanded, but enforcement and social norms remain challenges.
• Online Violence: Only nine APEC economies have laws against online violence against women, with high global prevalence.

Pillar 4: Leadership, Voice and Agency

• Public Sector Leadership: Women hold 22% of ministerial positions and 27.5% of parliamentary seats.
• Private Sector Leadership: Representation in private sector leadership roles remains low, with incomplete data.
• Policy Impact: Women in leadership roles contribute to better governance outcomes, including transparency and reduced corruption.
• Empowerment: Legal equality in business registration and contract signing empowers women to participate in the formal economy and pursue entrepreneurship.

Pillar 5: Innovation and Technology

• Digital Access: 99.5% of the population has mobile network coverage, and 80% use the internet.
• Digital Inclusion: Women's internet usage increased by 7.7 percentage points from 2017 to 2022.
• STEM Participation: Women's involvement in STEM fields remains low, with data on R&D engagement sparse and inconsistent.
• Innovation: Despite digital progress, structural and societal barriers limit women's participation in innovation and technology sectors.

The Road Ahead

• Data Collection: Mandate and fund sex-disaggregated data collection.
• Policy Integration: Embed women's perspectives into startup and innovation policies.
• Discrimination Reduction: Address employment and workplace discrimination, including wage gaps and harassment.
• Cross-Sector Collaboration: Foster partnerships to support inclusive innovation.

Conclusion

The APEC Women and the Economy Dashboard 2025 underscores that while there have been notable improvements in certain areas, gender inequality persists across multiple dimensions. Urgent and sustained action is needed to dismantle barriers, promote legal reforms, and ensure women's full participation in the economy. Supporting women-led startups and addressing systemic issues in access to capital, networks, and education are critical for achieving economic growth and gender equality.