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The collaborative study on gender equality and empowerment in the Arctic (UGEEA) aims to improve understanding of gender equality issues in the New Arctic at the national, regional, and local levels, identify concrete strategies for gender political, economic, and civic empowerment, and thereby facilitate sustainable policymaking for the New Arctic. This study employs an inclusive, collaborative approach to collect and analyze datasets, documents, and case studies to understand to what extent political, economic, and civic empowerment is distributed by gender. Broader impacts of the UGEEA Project include recommendations for the promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women, raising public awareness of gender issues in the Arctic, and the development of a publicly available data compendium on gender empowerment. The study also aims to narrow the existing knowledge gaps on gender empowerment across Circumpolar regions by including an assessment of gender empowerment at different levels relevant to the Arctic countries — national/quasi-national (for Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland), subnational (regional), municipal, and local (community) levels. The dataset examines gender earnings gap, gender disparity in tertiary education, and women's political leadership in the Arctic at the regional/(sub)national levels. 

On 21 May 2021, a milestone Pan-Arctic Report: Gender Equality in the Arctic was published in tandem with the Arctic Council’s Ministerial Meeting held in Reykjavík, 19–20 May 2021. This article provides a brief review of the report and its major findings across six chapters that address key themes concerning gender equality in the Arctic: Law and Governance, Security, Gender and Environment, Migration and Mobility, Indigeneity, Gender, Violence, Reconciliation and Empowerment and Fate Control. A major conclusion of the report is that accessible, comparable, gender-disaggregated, and Arctic -specific data is severely lacking. Further, all chapters highlight the importance of gender-based analysis and gender mainstreaming in all decision-making processes at national and regional levels. The varying roles that gender—and its intersections with existing inequalities—plays in mediating the impacts of climate change and other socioeconomic transformations are also discussed throughout the report. The Arctic Council is identified as the main driver for implementing recommendations that were provided and discussed at the Council’s Ministerial Meeting and in the Reykjavík Declaration 2021, where the eight ministers of Arctic states “Emphasize[s] the importance of gender equality and respect for diversity for sustainable development in the Arctic… encourage[s] the mainstreaming of gender-based analysis in the work of the Arctic Council and call[s] for further action to advance gender equality in the Arctic”. This report and its policy relevant highlights, address these priorities and serve as a knowledge base for promoting gender equality and non-discrimination in the Arctic. 

The Chapter aims to deepen the understanding of gender equality and empowerment issues in the Arctic region at the national, regional, and local levels, and identify concrete strategies for gender political, economic, and civic empowerment, thereby facilitating sustainable policy-making processes for the New Arctic. The Chapter "Empowerment and Fate Control" is a part of the peer-reviewed Pan-Arctic Report "Gender Equality in the Arctic," undertaken under the auspices of the Arctic Council's Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG) and the Icelandic Chairmanship Programme 2019-2021. 

Enabling gender equality by empowering all genders to effectively participate in modern society is one of the most important advances towards sustainable development, encompassing equal representation in the political office, labor market, and civil society (Sustainable Development Goal 5, or SDG5). The goal of this chapter is to improve understanding of gender empowerment issues in the Arctic at the national, regional, and local levels, and to identify concrete strategies for political, economic, and civic gender empowerment, and thereby facilitate sustainable policy making for the Arctic.