The Women 20 (W20) is an official G20 engagement group established during the Turkish presidency in 2015. The objective is to ensure that the gender considerations are mainstreamed into G20 discussions and translate into the G20 Leaders Declaration as policies and commitments that foster gender equality and women’s economic empowerment. India, under the able leadership of Shri Narendra Modi has made huge strides in ensuring an enabling environment for women. W20 India will strive to take forward the Honourable Prime Minister’s vision of India’s G-20 presidency to be inclusive, ambitious, decisive, and action-oriented. India will strive to ensure that the G-20 acts as a global “prime mover” to envision new ideas and accelerate collective action over the next one year as laid out by Honourable Prime Minister. W20 India vision is to create a world of equality & equity where every woman lives with dignity and the mission is to remove all barriers to women led development and ensure an enabling environment and ecosystem for women to thrive, transcend and transform their lives as well as others. Our goals are as follows:
• Inclusive consultations and action leading to a Powerful and impactful Communique
• Feed W20 recommendations into the G20 consultations and negotiations
• Influence and feed into the G20 Leaders’ Declaration and G20 Communique
• Establish a stronger W20 global and national network
• Ensure continuity of W20 agenda
W20 in India’s G20 Presidency will focus on four priority areas
• Grassroots women Leadership
• Women Entrepreneurship
• Bridging the Gender Digital Divide
• Creating Pathways through Education & Skill Development
Strategy: W20 will adopt a 4C strategy- Collaborate, Cooperate, Communicate and build consensus and Call for Action to achieve its mission and goals. We will include, involve and engage with various stakeholders concerned with women’s issues.
Stakeholders: Our primary stakeholder are grassroots women- women in tribal areas, rural, urban, women in agriculture, women artisans and women in handloom and handicrafts, informal sector, entrepreneurs, Anganwadi workers, PRIs etc. We will work closely with academic and research institutions for our student outreach programs as well as to develop knowledge products like white papers, policy briefs and research papers. International and national women’s civil society forums, local NGOs, UN agencies, ILO, chambers of commerce etc. will be the stakeholders. Our tryst is to make W20 inclusive and diverse.
Policy advocacy: The emphasis of W20 will be to influence the G20 Leaders’ Declaration and G20 Communiqué and take steps to build consensus for active engagement with women entrepreneurs, and commitments to policies that will advance gender equality
Plan of Action: W20 will conduct a series of meetings and events from villages to New Delhi to discuss and deliberate on W20 priority issues.
Jan Andolan & Jan Jagriti: Galli to Delhi-W20 will ensure participation of all women from all walks of life.Village choupal meetings will be organized to spread awareness about W20 and get women and people’s voices ingrained in the W20 policy briefs and communique. Meetings at gram sabha levels will be organized and gram sabha resolutions to be passed to ensure an enabling environment at the village level. Post card campaign to be carried out throughout the country in support of W20 priority areas and to influence policy makers and policies.
Women Entrepreneurship: The W20 agenda recognizes the importance of entrepreneurship and decent work, specifically in Goal 8.3 (SDG), “Promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial servic2es.” W20 will have dialogues and consultations with entrepreneurs, startup unicorns, nano and micro entrepreneurs and highlight their recommendations.
Global Consensus Building: Women’s economic empowerment is one of the world’s most promising areas of investment, biggest emerging markets, talent pools and demographic dividends to be tapped. W20 will work towards building global consensus on women’s economic empowerment as a force multiplier for good governance, economic growth, poverty eradication, ending hunger and achieving food security and nutrition, achieving sustainable consumption and production patterns and environmental sustainability, and SDG achievement overall.
As a universal call to action for all stakeholders, including in business, government, women and civil society, the W20 Agenda articulates priorities for joint efforts, so that all women including women from marginalized sections, can share the benefits of economic growth and development, with no one left behind. W20 will focus on the G20 and W20 Troika and ensure continuity of W20 priorities and work.
Role Models and Women Trailblazers: Women have contributed richly to the achievements of science, technology, engineering and many more.W20 will acknowledge the role models who can inspire women to achieve
Highlight major transformational schemes and practices of government and civil society: Highlighting government schemes and measures and making them reach to every women is one of the priority agendas of W20. Ladli Laxmi yojna in MP and many other good practices by government and civil society will be highlighted. Four large world class events with international delegates will be held showcasing India’s rich culture and heritage. Classical dance, handloom and handicraft mela with nano entrepreneurs and local cuisine. he 1st inception meet will be in Aurangabad on 13-15 February 2023. W20 will bring out various knowledge products- white papers, policy briefs, video documentaries, opinion pieces, handbook and communique with the purpose of influencing G20 nations and leaders to make women’s agenda at the core of G20 deliberations. Dr. Sandhya Purecha leads the W20 engagement group as Chairalong with eminent women as India delegates/participants- Dr. Jyoti Kiran Shukla, Prof Shamika Ravi, Ms. Bharati Ghosh, Raveena Tandon, Dharitri Patnaik as the Chief Coordinator of the W20 Secretariat (FICCI FLO) and AMUL as the institutional partner.
(While Dr. Sandhya Purecha is Chair W20, Dharitri Patnaik is Chief Coordinator, W20 Secretariat. Press Information Bureau-PIB Srinagar has mailed this article to “Kashmir Horizon” for publication in this newspaper. The views, opinions, facts, assumptions, presumptions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author but aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”.)
