The G20 leaders are getting ready for next month’s meeting in Cannes to discuss key economic and development priorities such as strengthening financial regulations, creating employment support and fighting corruption. Amid the ongoing volatility of global markets, this summit is especially important, as serious changes in infrastructure and policy need to be made to create sustainable progress in both financial and social sectors alike.
It’s time for a new focus on a fundamental question: Who can contribute the most to furthering development and stabilizing the global economic environment? I spent this past week in Paris as Canada’s official representative at the G(irls)20 Summit, which brings together 21 girls – a representative from each G20 country and the African Union – to discuss exactly this question, and to develop proposals for the G20 leaders regarding the role of girls and women within the framework of the broader G20 summit priorities.
The G(irls)20 initiative (organized by the Belinda Stronach Foundation) serves as a platform for delegates to learn practical skills and tools that they can use to start development initiatives in their home countries. The G(irls)20 also plays host to a series of panels and debates on issues closely linked to economic development. In the past week, we explored health, socio-economic and political development, gender-based violence and education/training.
The G20 leaders have a great opportunity to make positive changes. Gender inequality, for instance, has a devastating impact on our societies and communities. When 50 per cent of the population is isolated from participating in the economy because of hostile social barriers, it places significant limits not only on individual economies but on global GDP and productivity.
Providing better health care for women leads to a stronger, more productive work force. Increased education for girls and women leads to increased involvement in markets. But the scourge of gender-based violence violates human rights and takes away the voice of an industrious gender that has so many skills to contribute.
If you educate a woman, you educate an entire family – and a generation. The way gender roles unfortunately work in the developing world is that a man goes out to work in the field or the factory, then comes home. If you educate him, that knowledge instilled in him is finite; it will end with him. But if you teach a girl, she’s at home with kids and with others in the community. She will teach them, and that education snowballs into other areas.
The apex of the G(irls)20 summit occurred when we girls, each from a different nation, different culture and different socio-economic background, sat down and wrote a communiqué directed toward the G20 leaders. We came together as a global youth force, and declared that “women have the potential to play a pivotal role in global economic progress.” We urged “leaders and change-makers to work with purpose and urgency for the elimination of the obstacles that continue to hinder the participation of girls and women in being part of the solution to the global challenges we face.”
There are 3.3 billion girls in the world – which equals 3.3 billion ways to change the world. My number out of the 3.3 billion is #13,069. I encourage everyone who stands for hope and progress to get their own number at www.girlsandwomen.com.
Hanan Dhanani is an economics major at Queen’s University.
