Collaborating with governments for feminist policies

Honoured to attend a ceremony in Tokyo, with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, to hand over our report to the G7. It was an honour to serve on the G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council in 2023, and this in my capacity as Chair of European Women on Boards (EWOB). I led the topic of “Economic Empowerment of Women”, together with 2 fabulous ladies, Caroline Farberger and Anda Sapardan. We formulated recommendations to the G7 to: 1. Support women’s full participation in the economy, addressing the sociocultural barriers and double shift women still face. 2. Install a gender lens for public money: in budgets, audits and policy making. 3. Overcome gender bias in private capital allocation, and ensure equal opportunities for women-led fund managers and companies. 4. Increase the number of women in financial decision making, both in politics and companies. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eq_gfGrN The full report is available at:  https://lnkd.in/eCUhCwrN

This piece came from the heart. As Asian states are moving towards recognising the need for policies to address care, the question of how care will be provided is key. We are at a crossroads of decision making in Asia and the voices advocating for PPPs and innovative models of service provision are louder than the ones advocating for public care Rachel Noble and I try to unpack why care should be publicly provided by the state. I talk about the austerity and the alarming move towards private sector provision of key services. We try to unpack where the money could come from because paucity of resources is the key argument given when we advocate for publicly provided care. We call upon governments to: 1. Increase funding for universally accessible public care services, infrastructure and social protection, allocating sufficient resources to address the care deficit. 2. Develop and implement comprehensive care policies and systems, integrating public healthcare, social care, early years childcare and education. These should be based on the “5R Framework” advocated by feminist movements and their allies: recognition, reduction, redistribution, reward and representation. 3. Ensure decent and dignified work for paid carers, including by enhancing care workforce development, providing training, living wages, and decent working conditions. 4. Foster community-led care initiatives, supporting local solutions and empowering caregivers, ensuring they have a meaningful voice in decision-making. 5. Ensure accessibility, affordability, and cultural sensitivity in care service delivery. 6. Develop new measures of economic success beyond GDP that measure, amongst other things, women’s time-use on unpaid care and domestic work, to help make this work visible and to track progress in redistributing it to the state. https://lnkd.in/diSzEk9Q

Good advice to the UK's Foreign Minister David Lammy from Helen Pankhurst "Women leaders and gender-focused solutions should be a priority at every summit and a feature of every speech." "To make fighting for gender equality a core part of its foreign policy, a first step would be ensuring it’s protected under its own aid spend. This could be done with a new target of at least 20% of UK aid tackling gender equality as a primary objective. It’s critical that this Government listens to women and supports their vision, funds their organisations and amplifies their voices through its own development work. In a climate of tough choices, ensuring the aid budget is geared towards tackling inequality – a key driver of national and global instability – couldn’t be a smarter place to start." Link in the comments. #FeministForeignPolicy