From Recommendations to Results: Translating W20’s Goals to G20 Action

When Brazil assumed the G20 presidency in 2024, it was encouraging to see an immediate emphasis on issues important to gender equality, including social inclusion and sustainable development. This, coupled with the advent of the new ministerial Women’s Empowerment Working Group, signaled a promising year for G20 commitments on gender equality and economic empowerment.  

Outside of the G20’s Sherpa and Finance Tracks, which are composed of government representatives, the Social Track includes the G20’s Engagement Groups, in which non-governmental stakeholders can participate. The Women20 (W20), one of the engagement groups which has convened since 2015 to focus on women’s issues within the G20, is an important mechanism to inform G20 debates and negotiations. This year, the W20 had five key pillars: 1) entrepreneurship; 2) care economy; 3) women in STEM; 4) climate justice; and 5) ending violence against women and girls, with an overarching theme of the intersectionality of race and ethnicity. Over the course of the last several months, representatives from the 19 G20 countries, plus the EU and AU, worked together to develop recommendations across each of these areas. The resulting W20 Communique contains a set of heavily negotiated recommendations that reflect opportunities for the G20 to leverage previous commitments, track progress, and make new commitments to advance gender equality and the SDGs. 

Key outcomes from the W20 International Summit 2024

On October 1 in Rio de Janeiro, these recommendations were presented to the G20 Sherpa at the W20 International Summit via the W20 Communique (available alongside past communiques here). The summit, attended by hundreds of participants that included Brazilian governmental authorities, international organizations, other G20 engagement groups, donors, and the private sector, was an opportunity to highlight these recommendations supported by tangible best practices and opportunities from around the world. At the top of the agenda were the W20’s calls to continue progress towards the 2014 G20 Brisbane commitment to reduce the labor force participation gap 25 percent by 2025, to improve gender-sensitive and gender-disaggregated data, and to increase funding to advance gender equality initiatives.

Care economy recommendations

The care economy was a repeating theme throughout the W20 Summit, which was not surprising given the G20’s recognition of this issue over the last decade. The W20 also made a call to G20 leaders to make new commitments that are critical to advance the care economy: 1) reduce the labor force participation gap by 50 percent and 2) develop or maintain paid parental leave schemes (including at least 14 weeks of paid maternity leave and four non-transferable weeks for a second caregiver) in all G20 countries by 2030. 

In addition to these high level proposals, the W20 Care Economy Working Group put forward the following recommendations, accompanied by best practices in the W20’s forthcoming action plan. 

1. Reduce and promote an equal redistribution of unpaid care work by implementing government policies that integrate education, healthcare, and social services to support caregivers and provide inclusive, high-quality, and affordable care that is accessible to all, with a focus on children, older persons, persons with disabilities, and other dependents.
2. Recognize, measure, and value care work, particularly unpaid and informal care work, by systematically collecting and sharing quality, sex-disaggregated, and comparable data.
3. Reward paid care work and provide greater dignity for providers by actions and policies that promote fair employment practices, decent work, and social protection.
4. Commit to increasing critical and sustainable public investments in comprehensive care services and infrastructure, work towards affordable care systems, and support public-private funding models and innovative technological solutions, while also advancing policies that ensure equitable access to care and address systematic disparities across different communities.

Takeaways from G20 Women’s Empowerment Ministerial Meeting in October 2024

The Women’s Empowerment Working Group, established during India’s G20 presidency, had its first ministerial convening on October 11 in Brasília following meetings at the working level throughout 2024. The inclusion of care on the agenda of other G20 working groups, such as the Employment Working Group’s recognition of care as critical for women’s autonomy, was noted during the proceedings. Additionally, in the statement released after the meeting, the G20 Chair emphasized the need to recognize unpaid care and domestic work as a key barrier to gender equality and women’s ability to pursue education, paid work, leisure, and meaningful participation in all areas of life. G20 member states, with the disappointing exception of Argentina, signed onto this statement and committed to promoting gender equality in paid and unpaid care work and the cultural change and move towards co-responsibility that is necessary to do so. The statement further commits to developing care policies and encouraging investments to ensure strong and accessible social protection systems to help redistribute care responsibilities and ensure quality care and support services for children, people with disabilities, and older people. Finally, the statement supports and encourages better and more comparable data collection, including disaggregated time use data. 

These strong ministerial commitments on the care economy, which echo the W20’s recommendations, are a promising step forward for the G20. However, it is important that they are incorporated into the Leaders’ Declaration, the G20’s highest-level statement of consensus and priorities.

What’s next for care and the G20?

Following these productive discussions in Brazil and in anticipation of the G20 Social Summit and Leaders’ Summit in mid-November 2024, it is important that stakeholders:

1. Utilize these commitments and recommendations to develop and implement concrete actions and policies that prioritize the care economy and promote gender equality in all G20 member states. Leverage the W20’s action plan, once publicly available, to learn from and scale best practices. 
2. Work with G20 representatives to ensure that the care economy is an area of focus in the Leaders’ Declaration. While there has been recognition of care up to this point in the year, it is critical to ensure that this momentum continues into the final negotiations so that we see meaningful commitments in the Leaders’ Declaration. 
3. Look forward to 2025 and consider how to bring this agenda forward to South Africa’s G20 presidency–a significant moment, as this will be the first time that an African country hosts the G20. The United States will also have its turn in 2026, and it is not too early to consider the US’s priorities around development, gender equality, and the care economy.

The author is grateful for the review of this blog from Chiou See Anderson and Farahdibha Tenrilemba.