OSAKA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th June, 2019) Participants of a special event at the Group of Twenty (G20) summit on Saturday discussed the need to take further action toward women's empowerment through providing access to quality education and technologies.
The summit's host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, noted the Asian nation's efforts to secure women's education, adding that he made a relevant promise to Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist for female education and Nobel Peace prize laureate.
"We will work toward a world where all girls can access quality education for at least 12 years ... Japan will provide quality education and training for at least 4 million girls and women in developing countries for three years by 2020, and thereby work toward realizing safe and secure learning environment," Abe said.
Queen Maxima of the Netherlands also took the floor, stressing economic benefits of women's empowerment.
"All of us have an extraordinary opportunity to unleash the economic potential of women. If women had an identical role in the labor market as men, up to 28 million Dollars would be added to the global GDP by 2025," the queen said.
The queen, who also serves as the UN secretary-general's special advocate for inclusive finance for development, linked women's empowerment with digitalization � one of the key issues discussed during the ongoing summit. The queen noted the need to "bridge the digital divide" � the gap in the use of the internet between men and women. She also called for legal barriers and restrictions on the freedom of movement to be removed.
"These hurdles, among others, contribute to a staggering 7-percent in global account ownership between men and women. It is really necessary to close this gap for women to be economically empowered," Queen Maxima stressed.
Ivanka Trump, US President Donald Trump's daughter and adviser, urged the G20 countries to more actively involve women in the economy.
"We are united by a shared goal. We believe that women's inclusion in the economy is not solely a social justice issue, which of course it is. It is also smart economic and defense policy," she noted.
Ivanka Trump stressed that women in some 100 countries still had unequal rights under the law.
"We must continue to prioritize women's economic empowerment and placed it at the very heart of the G20 agenda. If we propose bold solutions and challenged the limits of the past, we will empower women to lift their families out of poverty, to grow the economies in their countries and to deliver greater peace and prosperity to millions around the world," she said.
Japan is hosting the G20 summit on Friday and Saturday for the first time since the G20 inaugural meeting convened in Berlin 20 years ago in response to the series of financial crises that hit emerging markets back in the late 1990s.
