Human Rights Lunch Online: Women and Work in the ICT Sector: Exploring Labour Rights in Sweden and Kosovo

This seminar presents our initial findings, developed through seed funding from the Human Rights Profile Area, which enabled our team to conduct two expert roundtables. These discussions clarified a central insight: while ICT (Information and Communication Technology) holds strong potential to empower women by increasing awareness and expanding employment opportunities, this potential is realised unevenly. Sweden illustrates how robust labour rights and initiatives such as Women in Tech Sweden support women’s advancement in ICT. In contrast, Kosovo’s emerging ICT initiatives operate within a weaker labour‑rights framework and uneven implementation of gender‑equality provisions, despite numerous efforts that often remain one‑off opportunities rather than sustained measures.

By comparing Sweden and Kosovo, our initial findings challenge existing gender stereotypes and foreground labour rights as a core condition for women’s empowerment in Kosovo’s ICT sector. These insights also aim to engage policymakers and industry actors by highlighting opportunities for systemic change, which are particularly relevant given the disparities revealed through our analysis. Sweden ranks among the highest globally on the Human Development Index, whereas Kosovo stands near the bottom within Europe. Yet Kosovo’s ICT sector has expanded rapidly, with more than 2,000 companies and a growing number of young women entering ICT education and careers. Despite this dynamism, gaps in labour rights and limited alignment with EU directives leave women vulnerable to unequal treatment even in a promising sector, such as ICT.

ICT therefore provides a strategic entry point for understanding how labour rights shape gender equality, especially in the Kosovo context. Sweden serves as a rights‑protective benchmark, while Kosovo offers a setting where women pursue ICT careers amid evolving institutional frameworks. Together, these cases ground our contribution to SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth).

Building on these initial findings and drawing on insights from the two expert roundtables held in Prishtina and Lund last year, we are now working toward establishing a consortium targeting Horizon Europe 2026, positioning this work for a full proposal under future gender‑equality and digital‑skills calls.

You can read an introduction to the presentation on the Human Rights blog.