Looking back on our G20 year: Reflections from The Motherload Project
As South Africa’s G20 presidency comes to an end, The Motherload Project reflects on a year of engagement across global policy spaces and on what it means to bring lived realities of care into international conversations.
May: Women 20 Inception Meeting
Our journey began at the W20 Inception Meeting in Cape Town in May. From the outset, one message was clear: care is not a side issue; it is the infrastructure that makes economic and social life possible. At a time of growing resistance to gender equity globally, South Africa’s G20 presidency created an important opening to centre care on the agenda. For our team, this space was about connecting to a wider international conversation and affirming that lived realities belong at the heart of global dialogue.
October: Women 20 and Think 20
In October, the conversation deepened at a W20 Side Event in Johannesburg, where attention shifted from why care matters to how care systems can be built. Strong South–South exchanges highlighted lessons from across Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, underscoring the importance of using data – including time-use surveys and the economic valuation of care – to secure investment; building continuity through institutionalisation; and leveraging public-private partnerships to scale care services. Across these discussions, Ubuntu emerged as a shared foundation: in African contexts, care is not only economic, it is a moral and social value. At this event, Sharing the Motherload was exhibited to international delegates, bringing mothers’ and fathers’ photographs and stories directly into the room and anchoring policy discussions in everyday life.
October also brought the W20 Summit, the first W20 Summit held on African soil, marking an important moment for care to be centred in global policy conversations. The panel “Care Economy: G20 Progress and the Road Ahead” focused on reducing the unpaid care gap, particularly for women in South Africa. Drawing on participatory research from The Motherload Project, Ameeta Jaga emphasised that this begins with making the full care burden visible – not only mental and emotional labour, but also the infrastructural, policy, and social conditions that shape care. Reducing the unpaid care gap, she argued, requires more than redistribution within households; it also demands structural support from the state and efforts to challenge gender norms that position care as women’s work.
Speaking on the T20 panel “Care and Social Protection at the Centre of the G20 Agenda for Solidarity, Economic Justice and Climate Resilience,” Ameeta Jaga focused on methodology and policymaking processes. She highlighted how iterative, participatory research – including early and ongoing engagement with government partners – can support more reflexive policymaking. For The Motherload Project, sharing findings early and often helped policymakers see where policies failed to match people’s realities, prompting new questions beyond what the data shows to whose realities are missing. This approach encouraged policymakers to see care, work, health, and infrastructure not as separate silos, but as interconnected systems, helping surface the hidden costs of care. G20 countries can institutionalise these mechanisms to continuously surface what is unseen. This also requires expanding how we measure care: beyond income and hours worked to include emotional load, waiting time, travel distances, and the quality of public infrastructure.
Also October: G20 Social Summit
Lastly, at the G20 Social Summit, Ruth Mathys (Flourish and The Motherload Project) participated in the panel “Centering Care in the G20 – Building Caring Societies through Solidarity and Ubuntu”. Drawing on mothers’ experiences of childhood stunting, a form of chronic malnutrition, Mathys highlighted the heavy care load mothers carry. This includes visible demands such as clinic visits and time off work, as well as invisible pressures around food costs, feeding, and judgement. These insights highlight why care must be embedded in G20 priorities: because health outcomes and care burdens are deeply connected.
The work isn't finished...
This year affirmed what The Motherload Project has shown: mothers’ stories can shift systems, global conversations must be grounded in lived experience, and care is the foundation of a thriving society. South Africa’s G20 presidency made care a policy priority, with commitments to recognise, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care work. But the work isn’t finished. The next step must be to institutionalise lived realities into care agendas, ensuring that the everyday experiences of caregivers shape the design of care ecosystems.