By Elsa Marie D’Silva

At the G7 summit that has just taken place, global political issues and challenges such as the Ukraine war or the climate crisis were discussed. Already in May, representatives of the W7 – a group of civil society organizations that come together to promote proposals on gender equality and women’s rights within the G7 process – met in Berlin under the motto “Time to Deliver” at the W7 Summit 2022. Representatives from civil society, politics and science gathered on- and offline, after W7 advisors from 24 countries had already met in working groups to develop political demands to the heads of state and government of the G7. Our GDL-Member Elsa D’Silva was part of the whole process.

The result was a joint declaration, the W7 Communiqué and the W7 Implementation Plan, which were handed over to the G7 President and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “It is high time for action, results and clear commitments from the G7 on gender equality,” Beate von Miquel, Chairwoman of the German Women’s Council, said at the handover.

The goal of the W7 is to “put gender equality at the center of the G7 negotiations and formulate strong demands to the G7 heads of state and government.”

The group calls for the following principles for a sustainable and gender-just transformation:

• Ensure meaningful participation and representation of women and girls in decision,
• Apply gender equality as a cross-cutting principle,
• Implement gender responsive budgeting,
• Invest in a sex and gender responsive, intersectional approach to data generation.

Followed by a list of particular issues such as:

• Enable gender-just COVID recovery, adopting transformative economic policies that address structural barriers to gender equality,
• Eliminate discrimination against women in all their diversity in the world of work and entrepreneurship,
• Invest in gender-transformative climate action and in biodiversity conservation measures,
• Commit to the funding of comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services.

Read here the detailed demands in the Communiqué and the Implementation Plan.

About the author: 

Elsa Marie D’Silva is the founder of Red Dot Foundation Global (Safecity), a platform that crowdsources personal experiences of sexual violence and abuse in public spaces. Since Safecity started in December 2012, it has become the largest crowd map on the issue in India, Kenya, Cameroon, Nigeria and Nepal.

Published on July 1, 2022.

Visual Credit: W7