WOMENTOR 2025: A Year in Review

As 2025 comes to an end, we are not rushing to summarise it.

We are sitting with it.

With the conversations that stayed with us longer than expected.

With moments of doubt and moments of clarity.

With the quiet sense that this year asked a lot and, in return, gave us something deeply grounding.

2025 stretched us.

It slowed us down in some places and pushed us forward in others.

And more than once, it reminded us why WOMENTOR exists at all.

This was a year in which the cracks in our systems became impossible to overlook.

Across countries and sectors, diversity, equity and inclusion were openly questioned, sometimes subtly, sometimes aggressively. Care work continued to be unevenly distributed, still framed as a personal responsibility rather than a structural one. And bias showed up everywhere: in hiring decisions, in leadership pipelines, in digital products, in GenAI images that flatten complex lives into stereotypes or erase them altogether.

At times, this reality felt heavy.

At times, discouraging.

And yet this is not the full story.

Because at the very same time, something else was unfolding.

We witnessed communities organising across Europe, not because it was convenient, but because it felt necessary. We saw one million signatures collected for My Voice My Choice, a reminder that collective action still has power when people refuse to disengage. We saw founders supporting founders through uncertainty, sharing resources, contacts and courage. We heard organisations reach out with a sentence that echoed again and again throughout the year:

“Now more than ever.”

Inside WOMENTOR, this momentum was palpable.

Our community grew, not only in size, but in depth. People joined with questions rather than certainty. With curiosity instead of polish. With a willingness to learn together, to challenge assumptions and to stay in the conversation even when it became uncomfortable.

This year reaffirmed something we have always believed, but felt especially strongly in 2025:

Systemic change does not happen because conditions are easy. It happens because people choose to show up, especially when they are not.

Everything we built this year grew from a vision that has guided WOMENTOR from the beginning:

A world in which equity is the standard, where organisations and communities foster a culture of togetherness that enables people, regardless of background, gender, age, orientations and worldviews, or physical and cognitive abilities, to realise their full potential.

This vision is not abstract to us. It is something we test, negotiate and translate into practice every day.

In 2025, it took shape in new platforms, deeper partnerships and conversations that asked more of everyone involved, including ourselves. It showed up in projects that demanded patience, in collaborations that required trust, and in moments where listening mattered more than speaking.

Many people still associate WOMENTOR primarily with mentoring. Over this year, our work has expanded into something broader and more systemic. Because the belief behind everything we do remains unchanged:

It is not women or minorities who need to change. The system needs to change, and systems only shift when communities move them.

One of the most visible expressions of this belief in 2025 was the launch of AI EMPOWER.

During the Pro European Values grant award ceremony.

What began as an educational initiative quickly evolved into a living, growing community focused on accessible learning, digital empowerment and confident, critical AI use. Through the Pro European Values project, AI EMPOWER reached far beyond what we initially imagined: hundreds of thousands of content views, tens of thousands of people reached, and a platform that became shaped by those who use it.

But the numbers only tell part of the story.

What mattered more were the conversations, in courses, in community spaces, and in political and civil-society settings in Vienna, Berlin and Brussels, where FLINTA* perspectives were not added as an afterthought, but centred in debates about AI, bias and digital rights.

The 2025 Female Business Group

Alongside this, our mentoring work continued, quietly powerful, deeply relational. Every year, mentors and mentees remind us that empowerment does not happen through advice alone, but through trust, reflection and shared experience.

Our Female Business Group accompanied founders through moments of transition and decision-making, offering space for clarity, confidence and momentum when it was most needed.

Together with Independo, we co-created Zukunft Mitgestalten as part of Demokratiehauptstadt Wien, ensuring that people with disabilities are not merely considered in discussions about AI and digital education, but actively shape them.

We deepened our work at the intersection of gender, disability and technology, strengthening the connection between DEI, digital inclusion and democratic participation. With Who Prompts?, we opened a conversation about agency and power in AI: who designs technology, who benefits from it, and whose realities become visible, or disappear, along the way.

We continued advising organisations on diversity, equity and inclusion, working with teams who chose commitment over retreat even as budgets tightened. And we delivered consulting projects that challenged us, inspired us and reminded us that trust is the foundation of any meaningful change process.

None of this happened in isolation.

The AI Unplugged Vienna Edition

Behind every project were people who showed up with care, clarity and courage. Partners who asked better questions. Teams who stayed when things became complex. Institutions willing to listen and learn.

This year sharpened our understanding of what truly matters.

Care work in Austria remains deeply uneven, shaping ambition, career paths, mental load and health. It is still a systemic issue, not an individual one.

We were reminded that strong organisational culture is not accidental, it grows from clarity, investment and continuous learning.

The panel talk from Who Prompts?.

We witnessed how FLINTA* representation in GenAI is shrinking rapidly, turning diversity into caricature or erasure, a stark reminder that bias is coded, visible and structural.

We learned, again, that community is not built through events alone, but through people who quietly show up: reading, listening, responding, returning.

We saw how representation in public discourse still matters, because courage is contagious.

DEI workshop

And we experienced a counter-movement to global DEI rollbacks: organisations choosing responsibility over silence, engagement over withdrawal.

Perhaps most importantly, we were told, clearly and repeatedly, that this work matters. Especially now.

That trust strengthened us.

Looking back, 2025 was not a year of quick wins.

It was a year of laying foundations.

Of opening new doors.

As we move into what comes next, we carry all of this with us: the lessons, the relationships, the hope.

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