P20 Women’s Parliament Urges G20 to Drive Inclusive Growth and Gender Equality

South Africa should use its leadership in hosting the 2025 G20 Summit and P20 to champion an ambitious agenda for inclusive economic growth and gender-responsive development, said Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) Director, Prof Dumisani Jantjies.

Speaking at this week’s P20 Women’s Parliament – part of the build-up to the P20 later in the year – Prof Jantjies told MPs, government leaders, chapter 9 institutions, NGOs and academics that the country’s role as host presented a unique opportunity to push for concrete action.

PBO recommendations include requiring G20 members to produce annual, publicly accessible gender budget statements detailing how national budgets address gender priorities, with disaggregated data on spending and outcomes. The office also proposes G20-wide gender equality targets with accountability mechanisms – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound indicators covering areas such as closing the gender pay gap, increasing women’s representation in leadership, and expanding access to finance for women entrepreneurs.

These targets should be backed by robust monitoring and reporting, said Prof Jantjies. He urged G20 states to commit to increased public and private investment in affordable, quality childcare, elder care and other services that disproportionately burden women.

The call to use government budgets to lift women out of poverty was echoed by Financial and Fiscal Commission (FFC) Chairperson, Dr Patience Mbava. She stressed the importance of gender-responsive budgeting – deliberately making intergovernmental fiscal systems responsive to women’s needs.

Dr Mbava noted that while South Africa’s May 2025 budget includes significant social spending and employment support, it does not explicitly embed gender redistribution as a core element of fiscal or development strategy. She said that gender budgeting is about gender-sensitive resource allocation – integrating a clear gender perspective at every stage of the budget process and understanding the implications of fiscal decisions on gender. It is not a separate budget for women, but an inclusive prioritisation of needs across genders.

Given persistent inequalities, she called for gender commitments to be matched by fiscal commitments, integrated across all sectors with equity targets, gender-disaggregated data, and inclusive programme design.

National Planning Commission member, Ms Tanya Cohen, addressed gender mainstreaming – assessing the impact of any planned action, including laws, policies or programmes, on women and men at all levels and in all sectors. She urged that every policy reform considered in Parliament should include gender implications in its deliberations.

Ms Cohen recommended that the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, together with National Treasury, conduct a comprehensive costing and increase funding for gender mainstreaming to enable effective leadership, coordination and implementation. She further proposed that the Presidency, National Treasury and the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation conduct an evaluation synthesis to diagnose successes and failures in implementation and enhance administrative capability.

Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) provided a sobering overview of women’s employment, revealing that women remain a majority in unemployment figures. Acting Deputy Director-General, Mr Solly Molayi, reported that the unemployment rate for women was 35,9% in Q2 2025.

The highest provincial disparity was in North West (12,7 percentage points), with Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Gauteng also showing gaps of 7–8 points. Black African women face the greatest vulnerability, with unemployment at 40,2% – 4,3 points higher than the national average for women. Women are more likely to be employed in community and social services, trade, finance and private households compared to men, according to Stats SA.

Representing Oxfam, Ms Phelisa Nkomo described the challenges women entrepreneurs face in accessing capital. Only 33% of businesses have credit access, with women in the informal sector particularly disadvantaged and lacking social security. She cited poverty, unsafe transport and harassment as further barriers, restricting trading hours.

Structural barriers – including race, class and education – continue to exclude women from growth opportunities. “Collateral demands exclude many Black women entrepreneurs, long payment cycles shrink margins, and small enterprise policies favour urban formal firms,” she said. “The same way we fought political exclusion is the same way we should fight gender exclusion.”

United Nations Development Programme Resident Representative Mr Maxwel Gomera called for widening the funding landscape beyond commercial banks to include specialist funds and cooperatives.

From the business sector, SHE-Power Medical Manufacturers CEO, Dr Ruth Apostolov, stressed that economic inclusion benefits everyone. “But we cannot achieve results through rhetoric – we require a results-driven approach,” she said.

The P20 Women’s Parliament made clear that hosting the G20 and P20 offers South Africa more than symbolic leadership. It is a platform to push for measurable, enforceable commitments that drive gender equality, economic inclusion and sustainable development.

Sakhile Mokoena
14 August 2025