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This blog is the second in a series discussing EITI Standard implementation ahead of its Global Conference. Read the first blog, on contract transparency in Zambia’s copper rush, here.

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Oil, gas and mining projects do not affect everyone equally. Existing inequalities in access to land, livelihoods and decision-making mean that women and gender minorities often experience the impacts of extraction differently—and more negatively—than men.

Women with insecure land rights may be less likely to receive compensation when land is acquired for a mine. Environmental degradation can disproportionately affect those who depend on natural resources for their livelihoods and increase unpaid care burdens. Extractive projects can also reshape communities in ways that increase risks of gender-based violence.

At the same time, women remain underrepresented in many of the institutions making decisions about extraction. The people who bear the costs are not necessarily the people deciding whether and how extraction takes place, or how revenues are managed and distributed.

This is why Oxfam and our allies fought tirelessly to incorporate strong gender provisions into the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative’s Standard. The 2019 EITI Standard introduced requirements on women’s participation, gender-disaggregated data and inclusive outreach, and the 2023 Standard strengthened gender provisions further. With no new Standard adopted in 2026 and the next substantial revisions not expected until 2028, the priority now should be ensuring that these gender provisions are meaningfully implemented.

Transparency is a feminist issue

Transparency is often discussed as though information itself is neutral. But what information is made public, how it is presented and who can access and use it all shape who benefits from transparency.

If the impacts of extraction are gender-differentiated, the information disclosed about extraction must allow us to see those differences. Gender-disaggregated information does more than add another category to a dataset. It reveals inequalities that aggregate data hide.

But there is another reason gender and transparency are inseparable: opacity protects existing power structures.

Information is power. When information about who receives extractive revenues, who gets jobs, what companies have promised communities, how revenues are spent or what governments have agreed to in contracts remains hidden, the people already closest to decision-making have an enormous advantage.

And those people are disproportionately men.

Men disproportionately occupy government, corporate, political, and traditional leadership positions connected to decisions about natural resources. When information is inaccessible, those who already have access to institutions, decision-makers, and informal networks are best positioned to obtain and use it. Secrecy therefore does not simply create an information deficit; it can reinforce the unequal distribution of power that already exists.

Contract transparency is one example. Extractive contracts can include provisions on women’s participation in consultations, workplace discrimination, local content and security. If those contracts are secret, women may not even know those protections exist, much less be able to hold governments and companies accountable for implementing them.

Payments-to-governments disclosures are another. Knowing what extractive companies and individual projects pay governments allows citizens to follow resource revenues and ask where that money ultimately goes and who benefits when it is spent.

Transparency does not automatically redistribute power. But it can expose inequalities and give people information they can use to challenge how power is exercised. This is why EITI’s core transparency requirements, whether or not they are explicitly framed as gender provisions, are also important tools for gender advocates seeking to understand and challenge inequalities in the extractive sector.

How is EITI doing?

There has been meaningful progress in implementing EITI’s gender provisions, but it is uneven.

According to research the EITI conducted this past year, women now account for around 30 percent of national EITI multi-stakeholder group (MSG) members, up from 20 percent in 2020. Gender-disaggregated employment reporting has also expanded, and more countries are incorporating gender into EITI work plans.

But the numbers also show where implementation needs to go further.

Women remain underrepresented in MSG leadership, and participation varies considerably by region and constituency. And while getting women into the room is important, counting the number of women in the room tells us relatively little about who sets the agenda, who speaks, whose expertise is taken seriously and who ultimately makes decisions.

Additional research conducted by the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), Resource Justice Network (RJN), and EITI points to some of the barriers behind these numbers. Women remain underrepresented in governance and consultation processes, financing and revenue management rarely reflect gender priorities, gendered governance risks such as gender-based violence are often overlooked, and significant gaps remain in gender-disaggregated data, particularly on informal work and local economic participation.

Disclosure is similarly uneven. Progress has been strongest on gender-disaggregated employment data, while information about how extractive revenues support gender-related programs and about gender-specific social and environmental impacts remains much more limited.

But gender-responsive transparency cannot stop at counting workers. A mine can employ more women while disrupting women’s livelihoods. A government can increase women’s representation on an EITI MSG while allocating extractive revenues in ways that fail to respond to women’s priorities. A requirement can technically be implemented without changing the underlying distribution of power it was intended to address. That distinction between compliance and meaningful implementation should be at the center of EITI’s gender agenda now.

The priority now is implementation

The 2023 EITI Standard introduced significant new and refined requirements, including substantial changes intended to promote gender equity. EITI has now moved to a longer revision cycle, with the next substantial revisions expected in 2028 and dissemination of the revised Standard planned for 2029.

That creates an important opportunity. Rather than adding another layer of gender provisions, EITI implementing countries now have space to make the existing ones work.

As recommended by NRGI, RJN, and EITI, that means setting measurable gender objectives in national EITI work plans and ensuring women’s meaningful participation and leadership on MSGs, including women from affected communities and grassroots organizations. Implementation also needs to extend beyond representation, with better gender-disaggregated disclosure and greater attention to the gender-differentiated social and environmental impacts of extraction. EITI and implementing countries can support this by addressing practical barriers to participation, strengthening gender-responsive financing and revenue management, and using EITI validation to translate gender commitments into country-specific targets and reform priorities.

Some countries are already showing what this can look like. The Philippines, for example, has incorporated gender into MSG nominations, work planning and outreach and is developing a gender impact assessment tool. The challenge is to make effective approaches like these standard practice rather than isolated examples.

Most importantly, we should stop thinking about gender-responsive implementation as an additional social objective layered onto EITI’s transparency work. It is central to whether transparency works at all. The purpose of transparency is not simply to put information into the public domain, but to give people the information they need to participate in decisions, scrutinize those in power, and hold governments and companies accountable. If women and other historically excluded groups have less access to that information or less power to use it, transparency risks reinforcing the very inequalities it should help expose.

The 2023 EITI Standard already gives implementing countries important tools to do better. The priority now should be making those commitments meaningful, not simply making women more visible in the data, but making power visible and giving more people the information they need to challenge it.