The W7

Who is involved?

From the COVID-19 pandemic to poverty, conflict and the climate crisis, women in all their diversity, have been and continue to be at the forefront of innovative and transformative responses to today’s challenges.

The W7 Summit will bring together women in all their diversity and amplify the voices, leadership, and perspectives of those not commonly part of the G7 forum.

This year the W7 is co-chaired by the Gender and Development Network (GADN) and Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS). GADN and GAPS are working with Care International UK and ActionAid UK on the Summit. We are also working on the W7 recommendations with CSOs in G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the USA) and from many countries in the Global South.

Building on feminist principles of intersectionality and inclusion the W7 aims to open decision and policy-decision processes to grassroots feminist activists from around the world, ensuring that voices who are often excluded can equally engage in these spaces.

Through the drafting of recommendations, sharing of good practices and testimonies, the W7 will ensure that the voices of feminists and women’s rights organizations are front and centre in the G7 process and that leaders hear them. Together, participants will prepare policy recommendations and demand that decision-makers place gender equality at the centre of the G7 while also ensuring that such policy outcomes respond to women’s realities and experiences around the world.

Parallel to the W7, there is also a gender equality group of the G7 Global Taskforce, which GADN co-chairs. For more information on the Global Task Force contact Kel Currah, Chair G7 Global Task Force, at kel@whatworldstrategies.com.

Gender Equality Advisory Council (GEAC)

On 8 March 2021, the UK government announced the creation of the Gender Equality Advisory Council (GEAC) – led by Liz Truss at ministerial level and chaired by Sarah Sands – to lead the UK’s gender equality work at the G7.

Building on the foundations laid by the Canadian and French G7 presidencies, the GEAC will champion the core principles of freedom, opportunity, individual humanity and dignity for women and girls around the world. The Council will set out recommendations as to how the G7 should work together to ensure women are at the heart of the build back better agenda as we recover from COVID-19. The Council will include members from each G7 country.

The membership of the GEAC was announced on 9 April 2021. Full details can be found here.

Thematic Areas of Discussion

The W7 calls on G7 political representatives to recognise that gender equality and the fulfillment of women’s rights is an aspiration that must be present across all priority areas.

For G7 Leaders, we will be framing our policy recommendations around the following priority areas, as decided by the G7:

• Trade and Prosperity

  Promote fair and equitable trade, and cancel all outstanding sovereign debt across private, bilateral and multilateral creditors, in order to increase fiscal space for equitable economic recovery in countries across the Global South.

• The Climate Crisis

  Provide financial support for gender-just climate action that is accessible for local and national women’s rights organisations.

• Health and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

  Provide equitable access to vaccines, protect health and care workers - who are predominantly women, and safeguard women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights during the health crisis.

• Open and Democratic Societies

  Enable all women to fully participate in political decision-making whether on COVID-19 recovery, economic recovery, economic policy, health or climate change and address structural racism, both domestically and internally, to ensure truly democratic societies.

For Foreign and Development Ministers, we will be framing our policy recommendations around the following thematic areas, reflecting some of their priorities:

• Women’s Economic Empowerment and just COVID-19 Economic Recovery

  Ensure that COVID-19 economic recovery plans are equitable and just, providing governments in the Global South with the resources needed for a just and sustainable recovery, and recognising the centrality of the care economy to any economic recovery efforts.

• Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG)

  Recognise that violence against women and girls is the ‘shadow pandemic’, and prioritise appropriate funding to address this structural issue.

• Girls’ Education

  Tackle the full range of structural barriers that are preventing girls from attending and finishing school.

• Women, Peace and Security

  Ensure the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda through funding, participation of women and girls and implementation of commitments.

• Health and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

  Provide equitable access to vaccines, protect health and care workers, and safeguard women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights.

• Open and Democratic Societies

  Enable all women, whatever discriminations they face, to fully participate in political decision making whether on Covid-19 recovery, economic policy, peace and security or climate change and promote decolonising relationships between the Global South and North as a means of correcting historic legacies, as well as addressing global structural racism, to ensure truly democratic societies.

• The Climate Crisis

  Provide financial support for gender just climate action.

The W7 will also be making proposals to the G7 Climate, Trade and Finance Tracks.

In addition to the G7 Leaders’ Summit, there are also a number of ‘tracks’ where other Ministers of G7 countries meet. A full list can be found on the G7 Website. Many of them will be discussing issues relevant to the W7. These include: The Foreign Affairs and Development track, the Finance track, the Climate track, the Health track and the Trade track.

The W7 has produced interim policy papers (please see below) in consultation with colleagues from other G7 countries through the G7 Global Task Force Gender Working Group, and with colleagues from around the world through the W7 Summit Advisory Group. These interim policy papers form the basis of the discussions that will be held at the W7 Summit, and which will then inform the W7’s Communique.

Summary of some of the W7s core messages

COVID-19 has exacerbated gender inequality, conflict and fragility. The G7, and its 2021 host, the UK Government, has an opportunity to begin to redress this by ensuring political and funding commitments at the G7 this year. This will require genuine gender mainstreaming throughout the G7, supported by technical gender expertise and financial commitments across the priorities.

COVID-19 has demonstrated that investing in the care economy must be central to recovery plans if prosperity is to be for all. Recognition of the centrality of care work will have to be part of the language and political commitment if the G7 economic recovery plans are to be taken seriously. We are concerned that the promotion of gender equality in relation to the COVID-19 economic recovery and women’s economic empowerment is relying solely on investment from the private sector. Meeting the needs of marginalised women in the Global South requires public investment and universal social protection, along with measures to create and regulate decent work.

Increasing amounts of gender-just climate finance, including finance that reaches women’s rights organisations, is vital. Moreover, COVID-19 economic recovery plans must tackle both the climate emergency and intersecting inequalities, in line with the Paris Climate Agreement and its commitment to gender equality.

Girls Education is important but must not obscure other areas of gender equality. Ambitious targets to end violence against women and girls should include financial support for evidenced-based prevention programmes. The G7 must go beyond political commitments to Women, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action that have been made and not met for decades and make commitments on how it will use its ODA and support the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda in full. Ensuring women’s political participation can best be attained by funding and supporting women’s rights organisations with long-term, core, flexible funding and promoting the representation and influence of local women-led movements across the whole development and humanitarian programme cycle and within decision-making processes.

Strong commitments to anti-racism and decolonisation are vital if the rights of all women and girls are to be recognised and delivered, but so far seem to be missing from the Open Society and Democracy agendas.

Women 7 (W7) Position Papers

• Leaders' Track (25 March 2021)

• Foreign Affairs and Development Track (25 March 2025)

• Finance Track (26 March 2021)

Please note that these are interim documents prior to the W7 Summit. As the G7 policy process develops, further versions will be presented until a final communiqué is produced and shared.

Position Papers from other G7 Engagement Groups

Civil Society 7 (C7)

• A transformative agenda for the G7: Recommendations from UK civil society (Bond and the C7, 15 March 2021)

Labour 7 (L7)

• Key Priorities for the G7 Presidency in 2021 (Trades Union Congress (TUC), the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) and the L7, 26 February 2021)

The Group of Seven (G7) is a discussion forum consisting of seven of the largest world economic powers (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) organised under a rotating presidency. In addition the World Bank, the IMF and the European Union are represented.

The UK takes on the G7 Presidency in 2021 and is set to host the G7 Summit in Cornwall from 11 - 13 June. The UK government has invited Australia, India and South Korea to attend the Leaders’ Summit as guest countries. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressed this year’s Summit aims to unite G7 leaders to “build back better from coronavirus, uniting to make the future fairer, greener and more prosperous.” The UK government has named the following as priority areas:

• Leading the global recovery from coronavirus while strengthening our resilience against future pandemics
• Promoting our future prosperity by championing free and fair trade
• Tackling climate change and preserving the planet’s biodiversity
• Championing our shared values

In addition to the Leaders' Summit, other Ministers will also be meeting. The W7 will focus particularly on the Leaders track, the Foreign and Development Ministers track, the Climate ministers track and the Finance ministers track. This year there is no specific meeting of Gender Ministers, but gender equality has been said to be mainstreamed throughout the Summit discussions. Fore more information visit the G7 website.

Along with hosting the G7 Summit in June 2021, throughout the year the UK government is also holding a series of ministerial and official roundtable meetings between a variety of Government Ministers from the G7 countries. The W7 will be engaging with G7 Officials and Ministers at some of these meetings, as well as the W7 Summit:

• 25th March: Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Working Group's Second Meeting
• 29th - 31st March: Sherpa II Meetings
• 31st March: Trade Track (Trade Minister Introductory Meeting)
• 15th April: Sous Sherpa Meeting (Leaders' track)
• 15th April: Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Working Group's Third Meeting
• 21st - 22nd April: W7 Summit
• 4th - 5th May: Foreign Affairs and Development Track Ministerial Meeting
• w/c 5th July: Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Working Group's Fourth Meeting

Please continue to refer back here as we continue to add more information regarding W7 Meetings with G7 Officials.

• Statement by the leaders of the G7 (19 February 2021)
• G7 Trade Ministers’ Meeting – Chair’s Statement (31 March 2021)
• UK’s G7 Trade Track Opening Statement – International Trade Secretary Liz Truss' opening statement at the inaugural G7 Trade Track (31 March 2021)
• G7 Foreign and Development Ministers’ Meeting: communiqué (5 May 2021)