Women Leaders Drive Gender Equality Into Global Summits

The Brazilian G20 presidency last year brought various innovations that are now regular parts of the G20 and P20 summits. These include the Meeting of Women Parliamentarians, which this year will be jointly hosted by the South African Parliament and its provincial legislatures and will be linked to the P20 Youth Parliament. According to the concept document, these events will, in future, be side-line events of inter-parliamentary institutions, such as the 150^th IPU Assembly, the 57^th SADC Parliamentary Forum (PF) Plenary Assembly, the 11^th BRICS Parliamentary Forum and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.  

The first Meeting of Women Parliamentarians was held in Maceio, in Brazil under the theme: Building a just World and Sustainable Planet. A delegation of over thirty women parliamentarians, activists and experts participated in its inaugural session. They participated in various engagements on laws, good practices and public policies aimed at ameliorating the pressing challenges on three priority axes: climate justice and sustainable development for women and girls, increasing female representation in decisions -making spaces, and combating inequalities and promoting women’s economic autonomy..

Although declarations were adopted thereafter on these topics, what this session underscored is that the Meeting of Women Parliamentarians should, in future, precede G20 summits. In keeping with this undertaking, the South African Parliament held the 2^nd Meeting of Women Parliamentarians on 6 and 7 August 2025. The objectives of this meeting were three-fold: to provide a platform for inter-parliamentary dialogue among women parliamentarians, to share experiences, lessons learned and good practices, and to synergise parliamentary cooperation at the national, regional and global levels, particularly within the P20 context.

These objectives were streamlined to, among other things, address challenges regarding: gender mainstreaming in disaster reliance and response programmes; ensure the inclusion of women in mobilising finance for a just energy transition; develop gender sensitive programmes for inclusive growth and sustainable development; and resource mobilisation and funding for women-owned agricultural cooperatives and projects.

The expected outcomes of these debates and deliberations were to “develop common position on global challenges that continue to affect women and reach a consensus on how to place those issues on top of the G20 agenda. Another outcome was to issue a Cape Town Declaration of the 2^nd Meeting of Women Parliamentarians with a set of actionable recommendations to be negotiated and taken forward to the 11^th P20 Summit for inclusion and clear expression in its final joint declaration statement, the concept document claims.