Saudi Gazette Report
RIYADH — In concert with International Women's Day, to be celebrated on March 8, B20 Saudi Arabia, the official business voice of the G20 community, profiled several priorities for the Women in Business Action Council. The Council, the first of its kind for the B20, will ensure that issues surrounding gender diversity in business and economic empowerment of women are placed at the center of the B20 Saudi Arabia.
While the B20 task forces work on policy recommendations, the Action Council has identified three priority areas that need immediate action:
- Level the playing field for women by driving reforms to unlock their full workforce potential, fostering an enabling environment, encouraging new ways of flexible working and closing the gender pay gap.
- A call to action for countries to create the environment and to improve access to resources for women to succeed in starting their own businesses.
- Bring all stakeholders together to accelerate progress, developing an institutional framework while designing user-centric policies that enable women to thrive.
The B20 Saudi Arabia has established six task forces that concentrate on specific economic priority areas, with 656 task force members across all G20 members. The Women in Business Action Council sits across all six task forces, a structural change from past B20 cycles. Women make up 43 percent of the B20 Saudi Arabia Task Force and Action Council Chairs, the highest proportion in the group's history. Furthermore, the B20 Secretariat established criteria for Committee Membership that has resulted in 33 percent of participants being women, the highest percentage among some of the most recent B20 cycles (Turkey 23 percent in 2015, Germany 22 percent in 2017, Argentina 28% in 2018)."The Women in Business Action Council is the first initiative of its kind in the history of the B20. It has been established with the recognition that mainstreaming women in business is key to improving the standards of business conduct including integrity, empathy, and creativity, thus adding to economic growth and productivity," said Yousef Al-Benyan, Chair of the B20 Saudi Arabia.Aligned with the key theme of International Women's Day 2020 "I am generation Equality: Realizing Women's rights," the Council is primarily focused on addressing gender inequality, increasing women's participation in the workforce and their representation in leadership positions. It comprises 52 members from the global business community and is represented by every one of the G20 members."The Women in Business Action Council is addressing workplace challenges by looking at related life-cycle solutions ranging from higher education & STEM to addressing impediments to professional advancement and leadership positions using a mix of organizational culture to legislative / regulatory options," said Ms. Rania Nashar, Chair of the Women in Business Action Council and CEO of SAMBA. "We will be bringing our efforts around women empowerment to life over the course of the next year by participating in a number of initiatives in the region and abroad."To help socialize their priorities and secure input from the broader B20 community, the B20 Women in Business Action Council will participate in a number of high-profile global events over the course of the next year.
