Leveraging the G20 to Advance Policy Action : A South-South Peer Learning Workshop on Gender Transformative Care Systems and Policies
This report distils lessons from the South–South Peer Learning Workshop on Gender-Transformative Care Systems and Policies, held in Johannesburg in October 2025. It synthesizes emerging insights across regions, identifies barriers to institutionalization, and outlines policy directions for governments, funders, and partners seeking to position care as a cornerstone of equitable development.
The South–South Peer Learning Workshop on Gender-Transformative Care Systems and Policies, held in Johannesburg in October 2025, brought together over 120 policymakers, researchers, and feminist advocates from Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa to exchange experiences on building care systems that are equitable, sustainable, and transformative.
Across discussions, participants converged on a central insight: care is economic infrastructure. It underpins labor productivity, social resilience, and inclusive growth, yet remains chronicaly undervalued and underfunded. Building robust care and support systems demands sustained political commitment, long-term financing, legal anchoring, and coordinated governance across national and local levels.
The workshop revealed both optimism and realism. Countries across Latin America have developed models of national and subnational/municipal care systems that integrate childcare, eldercare, and disability support, while also focussing on the welbeing and needs of paid and unpaid caregivers. The recent landmark Advisory Opinion OC-31/25 issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in June 2025, which for the first time recognized care as an autonomous and enforceable human right, provides an important legal backing for these systems and policies. African governments are also advancing promising initiatives, introducing National Care Policies, and supporting care-focused municipal innovations and programs. Yet across contexts, progress is uneven, with persistent chalenges around fiscal space, data, political continuity, and norms change.
This report distils lessons from plenaries and roundtables. It synthesizes emerging insights across regions, identifies barriers to institutionalization, and outlines policy directions for governments, funders, and partners seeking to position care as a cornerstone of equitable development.
This workshop, held two days before the W20 Summit, was also convened at the end of the Scaling Care Innovations in Africa Mid-Term Workshop which brought together 19 action-research projects across 15 countries in Africa scaling innovations that reduce women’s unpaid care time across multiple contexts.