Women's Empowerment as a Key Enabler for Economic Recovery

As part of the package of activities leading up to this weekend's Saudi G20 Presidency, an interesting event was held on the empowerment of women as an important element in the desired global economic recovery.  

A virtual roundtable was held during the summit week of the Saudi G20 Presidency on Women's empowerment as a key enabler for economic recovery. The round table featured Dr. Reham AlRassi, Policy Advisor Head of G20 Women's Empowerment, Dr. Hala AlTuwaijri, Chair of the Women Workstream, Mrs. Rania Nashar, CEO of Samba/Empower Alliance, Mrs. Salma AlRasheed, Women 20's Sherpa, Ms. Michiko Achilles, Special advisor Gender Equality and Human Recourse Policies, Ms. Carla Abiven, Executive Assistant to the Women's Forum for Economy and Society, and Stefano Pizzicannella, Director General of Empowerment for International and General Affairs of the Government of Italy.

Hala al-Tuwaijri positively highlighted the greater role of women in all areas and their importance for the Saudi world summit: "Women's empowerment is a core priority for the 2020 G20 Saudi Arabia presidency and has been considered holistically across multiple workstreams as well as through the advancement of the Empower alliance."

Empower was launched in Osaka 2019 after a suggestion from the Canadian Sherpa, progress greatly accelerated in 2020 as the Alliance became functional and members met for the first time. Empower was established and grown to 24 country representatives with all G20 members (except South Africa and China) and six invited countries represented.

Mrs. Rania Nashar, CEO of SAMBA and Empower Alliance, mentioned that Empower is working this year to further advance the presence of women in leadership positions, "with the Empower members from twenty four countries to further connect the private sector leaders across all these countries to share best practices and accelerate the change - that's why we have created two major reports with OECD and ILO to measure the progression and the advancement of women in leadership positions."

Empower is building an alliance network to support the advancement of women internationally. Mr. Stefano Pizzicannella, Empowerment General Director, shared Italy's vision to move the alliance forward and shed light on the importance of Empower being owned and represented by the private sector which strengthens their potential impact during the Italian Presidency.

The G20 is best known for its annual Leaders' Summit, which brings together G20 members, heads of state from invited countries and relevant international organisations. The G20's annual agenda includes ministerial meetings, working group meetings, workshops and side events, throughout the year leading up to the Summit. Government officials and ministers use these opportunities to collect, negotiate and agree on ministerial communiqués and working group outcomes.

The G20 is based on a rotating presidency system. Each year, a G20 Member State holds the Presidency and leads the dialogue process to ensure that previous, current and subsequent G20 Presidencies work together in a systematic way. The incumbent presidency involves the outgoing presidency and the succeeding presidency when forming meeting agendas, under the “t roika” system.Saudi Arabia, this year's host, is part of the 'troika' with Japan (2019 presidency) and Italy (2021 presidency). 

Under the Saudi presidency, the agenda focuses on "Realizing Opportunities of the 21st Century for All" by empowering people, safeguarding the planet and shaping new frontiers. 

The Presidency is responsible for hosting the G20 meetings throughout the year and leading the agenda. The host country can also invite non-member countries to attend meetings and help build the policies needed to address the issues on the agenda. This year's invited countries are Spain, Jordan, Singapore and Switzerland. 

The G20's work is divided into two tracks: 

The Finance Track: composed of all meetings of G20 finance ministers, central bank governors and parliamentarians, it meets several times a year to discuss financial and economic issues, including monetary and fiscal policy, infrastructure investment, financial regulation, financial inclusion and international taxation. 

The Sherpa Track: focused on socio-economic issues such as health, education, trade, women's empowerment, employment, anti-corruption, tourism, agriculture and water, energy, climate and the environment. The Sherpa Track includes several meetings, where ministers, deputies and government officials develop and negotiate declarations in the run-up to the Leaders' Summit. Each G20 country is also represented by its designated Sherpa. G20 Sherpas are involved in planning and negotiating the final Leaders' Statement and coordinating various discussions on the G20 agenda.