A meeting of G20 leaders doesn’t typically leave you thinking about how they’ll empower women, given the majority of those participating in such meetings tend to be men.
Of the 35 leaders and guests who attended the G20 in Rome in 2021, just five were women. And just three of those were representing a G20 member state. One of the five included former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, at her final G20 meeting.
Leaving aside the lack of women involved, history shows that while these meetings may have discussed gender equality in the past, real and actionable commitments with specific implementation measures have been in short supply.
While G20 summits have seen plenty of gender equality commitments made, achieving such commitments and targets requires significantly more work that what most member countries have put in. Analysis has found G20 members achieved an average 50 per cent of 12 of the 20 G20 summit’s core gender commitments made between 2009 and 2016. Meanwhile, the only meeting of the G20 to result in a clear commitment for improving women’s economic security came in 2014, at the Brisbane summit — which is yet to be followed up with clear implementation mechanisms.
So will the summit in Indonesia this November finally see more commitments made on women’s economic security, safety and empowerment?
The time to do so has never been more important. Reports by the World Economic Forum have found that women have lost jobs at higher rates than men during the pandemic, and have been more likely to be burdened with child care, domestic responsibilities, and elder care. These factors have contributed to high levels of stress for women and lower levels of productivity. UN Women reports that the gap between women and men’s participation actually growing in 2021, and the continued lengthy recovery ahead.
There is talk this year of world leaders endorsing a plan that goes deeper than ever before in empowering women. The plan may seek to consider ideas on supporting entrepreneurship, enabling greater access to education and violence, eliminating gender-based violence and addressing the uneven distribution of unpaid care and domestic work.
Australia’s Minister for Women Katy Gallagher is in Bali to discuss the plan this week, with the talks starting on Wednesday, in preparation for the mid-November G20 summit, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will be attending.
She told AAP this initial Bali visit for the Ministerial Conference on Women’s Empowerment will be an opportunity to discuss issues facing women globally, and to help inform recommendations to G20 leaders in advance of their meeting later this year.
“The conference presents a unique opportunity to discuss the many issues facing women around the world and to directly inform recommendations to G20 leaders who will meet in Bali later this year,” she told AAP.
She said she’ll be learning from other women’s ministers, while also sharing plans the Albanese Government has for supporting gender equality.
Let’s hope the end result, come November this year, is an action plan that covers implementation mechanisms and clear accountability metrics to track just how countries are performing on their promises.