Building caring societies under the South African G20 Presidency and beyond

By The Care 20 Collaborative Initiative*

Comprehensive care and support systems are essential for fostering inclusive, resilient, and sustainable development. By placing care at the core of its agenda, the G20 has a unique opportunity to champion human rights, shared prosperity, and gender justice, all while advancing a just transition and equitable growth. Embracing this agenda enables G20 countries to achieve a triple win: fostering thriving societies, sustainable environments, and resilient economies. 

The 2024 G20 Leaders’ Declaration made progress towards this goal. We commend the G20’s commitment to building a just world and a sustainable planet, ensuring no one is left behind. Addressing inequality in all its dimensions as a central focus of the G20 agenda during Brazil’s presidency was a crucial advancement, particularly in recognising that the intersecting crises of our time demand urgent action.

We also celebrate Brazil’s G20 Leaders’ Declaration reaffirming its commitment to gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. The pledge to achieve a more equitable distribution of paid and unpaid work by promoting social and gender co-responsibility and challenging restrictive social norms is a meaningful step towards systemic change, aligned to the Care20 proposals. 

As the South African G20 Presidency draws towards its close, leaders should consolidate recent progress by fully recognising care as essential to the shared vision of strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth. Increasing investments in care—reaffirmed in international commitments such as the Pact for the Future and the Compromiso de Sevilla, adopted at the Financing for Development Conference—must be placed at the centre of strategies to realise this vision.  As the Brisbane Goal expires with only nine G20 countries having achieved the 25% reduction in the gender gap in workforce participation by 2025, G20 Leaders should also adopt the W20’s Johannesburg Goals, which set three new targets: reducing the female labour force participation gap, the gender wage gap and the unpaid care gap, each by 35% by 2035.

Care is fundamental to sustaining life and advancing the well-being of individuals, communities, economies, and ecosystems alike. It is a universal experience: everyone, regardless of age, gender, or background, will both provide and receive care at some point. Care plays a critical role across social and economic structures, enabling individuals across their life cycle to develop and maintain capabilities, sustaining the workforce, and supporting environmental stewardship. Unpaid care and domestic work account for 9% -equivalent to US$11 trillon- of global GDP: it is the invisible but foundational engine of our economies. Yet despite its significance, care work remains undervalued and underinvested while being predominantly performed by women, exacerbating gender inequalities.

G20 leaders have acknowledged the importance of care through various commitments, including the 2014 Brisbane goal of reducing the gender labour force participation gap by 25% by 2025, the 2018 G20 Early Childhood Initiative, and the G20 Roadmap Towards and Beyond the Brisbane Target. Under the Brazilian G20 Presidency, the Women’s Empowerment Working Group developed a common roadmap towards care societies and climate justice. However, action is still lagging behind in converting these commitments into transformative policies and new investments on the ground.

In today’s polycrisis—from economic and geopolitical instability to climate change and public health challenges—, investing in the care and support economy is both urgent and transformational. Care—in all its forms of nurturing, assistance, support, and infrastructure—is critical to reimagining our societies and economic systems. Comprehensive care and support systems can foster social cohesion, reduce inequalities, contribute to sustainable growth, and equip societies to withstand ongoing and future challenges, including those generated by climate change and environmental degradation. Investments in care and support can protect human and nonhuman life, guaranteeing the rights of all individuals, care recipients, caregivers, and paid care workers alike, while protecting nature and offering multiple socioeconomic returns. Care investments boost women’s workforce participation, support child development, enhance well-being, bolster tax revenues, increase productivity and generate sustainable green jobs, while building individual and community resilience to adapt to a changing climate. 

The following recommendations provide a pathway for G20 leaders and stakeholders—through and beyond South Africa’s G20 Leaders’ Summit—to cultivate care-centred societies, addressing the needs of individuals, communities, and the planet towards sustainable development.

Advancing Age-Responsive, Disability-Inclusive and, Gender-Transformative Care and Support Systems in the G20 and beyond

G20 governments should create and fund comprehensive and resilient care and support systems that uphold human rights for all individuals, including women. This should include offering care and related services, programmes, and infrastructure that address both immediate needs and structural inequalities.

  • Consider diverse and intersectional needs to leave no one behind: address the varied needs of those who provide and receive care across gender, age, race, socio-economic background, disability, and migrant status.
  • Adopt a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach: Facilitate inter-institutional coordination, social dialogue, and civil society engagement.
  • Strive towards universality, ensuring that care and support services are available, accessible, affordable, and of high quality for all.
  • Ensure equitable and sustainable financing for care and support systems, through traditional and alternative funding, including climate change finance, loss and damage funds, and progressive taxation.
  • Adopt the 5R framework: care and support systems should recognise, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care work, advancing towards the Johannesburg goal of reducing the unpaid care gap by 35% by 2035; whilst representing and rewarding paid care work through decent work and collective bargaining.
  • Strengthen data collection and research for evidence-based decision-making, including time-use data and socio-economic measurements of the contributions of care to inform efforts to go “Beyond GDP” as a measure of wellbeing and economic success.
  • Address care as a cross-cutting priority, integrating it in diverse policy areas, including climate change, infrastructure, transportation, migration, ageing, and technology.
  • Enshrine care and support systems in normative and legal frameworks, recognising care’s vital role as a public good and foundational to inclusive and sustainable development.

To this end, it is fundamental to leverage G20 leadership to catalyse global action on care and support systems by: 

  • Committing to increased investment in care and support systems that provide long-term infrastructure, programmes and services, as put forth in the Pact for the Future and the Compromiso de Sevilla. UN Women calls for countries to allocate at least 10% of their national incomes to care services.
  • Develop a five-year action plan on care and support: Building on the G20 Roadmap Towards and Beyond the Brisbane Goal and the G20 Initiative for Early Childhood Development, create a plan that leverages their synergies; outlines clear goals, strategies, and milestones, including the adoption of the Johannesburg Goals; and establishes metrics for advancing care and support systems across member states. 
  • Promote peer learning, knowledge exchange and coordinated action: Facilitate spaces for knowledge sharing and coordination across G20 engagement and working groups, ensuring care is embedded as a central priority in each group’s agenda—aligned with the Care20 vision—, and leverage the work done to date. Concrete opportunities for coordination and advocacy include G20 engagement groups’ events (inceptions workshops, mid-term conferences, summits and side events) and the G20 Social Summit.
  • Advocate for investing in care systems in key global spaces: Strengthen multilateral action and support initiatives such as the Global Alliance for Care to mobilize collective action and advance towards caring societies. 

 

More details in the T20 policy briefs: 

* The Care 20 collaborative group is an independent network committed to fostering cooperation, generating evidence, and advocating for comprehensive care policies in G20 countries and beyond. The Care 20 initiative produces research outputs, including policy briefs and articles, and coordinates outreach efforts and events, aligned with key moments in the G20 and multilateral calendars to advance the care agenda.

The following organisations have collaborated in the elaboration of this policy brief:

  • CIPPEC
  • Center for Global Development
  • Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator
  • IWWAGE
  • UNRISD
  • Wow Mom Kenya  

With the support of the Global Alliance for Care and IDRC

 

In particular, the Care 20 acknowledges the valuable contributions of Florencia Caro Sachetti, Carolina Robino, Victoria Duncan, Anna Eknor Ackzell, Kelsey Harris, Jacqueline Leduc Estrada, Sona Mitra, Ana Moreno, Amar Nijhawan, Peninah Ndegwa, Ana Carolina Ogando, Laura Pérez, Yara Tarabulsi, and Brett Weisel to this policy brief. 

 

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