File photo: South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana Mashabane (left) with Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and new UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa [Image: UNFCCC]South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane is in China’s Xi’an where she is participating in a summit of the W20, a G20 engagement group, taking place on 24-26 May.
Last year, the world’s 20 leading economies, the G20, launched a new grouping aimed at boosting the role of women in global economic growth.
The W20 (Women20), a grouping of female leaders was launched in the Turkish capital Ankara in September, where Finance Ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 were meeting for talks on the global economy.
“South Africa views this meeting as important in the context of its membership within the BRICS Bloc as a number of common interest issues such as population and development are discussed,” said an official statement posted on the South African Foreign Ministry website on Monday.
Mashabane is leading a team from South Africa that includes the Minister of Social Development Bathabile Dlamini as well as senior officials from the Department of Women.
The W20 aims to work toward empowering women and ensuring their participation in economic growth.
A new McKinsey Global Institute report finds that $12 trillion could be added to global GDP by 2025 by advancing women’s equality.
The group’s meeting in China this year will take place under the theme: “Equal participation and innovative development”, that would focus on “gender perspective in global economic governance”, “women’s employment and entrepreneurial and social protection” and “women’s role in the digital economy”.
The meeting’s outcome communique will be adopted and tabled at the G20 Leaders meeting scheduled to take place on 4-5 September in Hangzhou, China.
A high-level panel backed by the World Bank, UN Women, the IMF and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) is producing an action plan to improve women’s economic opportunities over the next 15 years.
The G20 was formed to accommodate the views of both the rich and developing world economies in the aftermath of the 2008 crash. Members include the US, the UK, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico and Russia.
The US economy has joined the slide in economic activity in recent months, triggering further concerns that global trade, which has already tumbled over the last 18 months, has further to fall.
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