G20 nations must rethink the systems that hold women back

By: Naadiya Moosajee

According to the World Economic Global Gender Gap report for 2025, it will take 107 years for sub-Saharan Africa to achieve gender parity.

I do not have the time nor the patience to wait that long.

Gender inequality is holding South Africa back, both financially and socially. If women participate in the economy we will see more investments in families and communities in ways that catalyse broader social benefits, such as better health, education, and a reduction in child mortality. When the gender gaps persist, we see none of those gains and, in a country with high unemployment, we cannot ignore our underutilised assets to create benefits for us all.

The World Economic Forum report was published as women across Africa are being called on to participate in G20 preparatory task forces and working groups. I am one of those. In these gatherings, I see a powerful opportunity at the intersection of gender, engineering, and entrepreneurship. It is one that G20 nations cannot afford to ignore.

My two-decades-long journey as an engineer, founder, and ecosystem builder for women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mining and Manufacturing) has been defined by one conviction: the future must be co-engineered by women. As we mark National Women’s Month in South Africa it is clear that we must take real action to dismantle the invisible barriers that prevent women and girls from participating fully in shaping our engineered world.

The G20 represents the world’s largest economies, yet gender gaps in engineering remain stubbornly persistent across all member countries. The gender gap across the world is at 68.8% closed - a 0,3% improvement from the previous year. In engineering, we have seen this gap narrow slowly, and in 2024, the Engineering Council of South Africa had just under 16% of its members being female.

While we see gains in education, the drop-off into employment, leadership, and entrepreneurship is severe. Gender-based industry segregation still persists and the majority of the female workforce is in lower-paying, people-centric industries.

Women remain vastly underrepresented not just in technical roles but in the design of the systems and solutions that govern our lives—from infrastructure to AI, energy to transport.

When I look at the work done by WomHub with vast numbers of women, it is clear that inequality in STEM isn’t a pipeline problem, it’s a power problem. Women don’t just need to be included; we need to be supported to lead, innovate, and own. Through our programmes to advance women in engineering from high school to engineering to entrepreneurship we have seen the challenges as being not just about access but about redesigning the system itself.

We have seen women being overly mentored and under-funded, with only 2% of venture capital going to female founders across the African continent. Capital unlocks opportunity and the lack of funding to female entrepreneurs has been a real challenge, especially those in STEM industries which often require high capital upfront.

As we lead up to the G20 event in November, with multiple taskforces working under the theme “Solidarity, Equality & Sustainability,” here are three critical insights G20 leaders must consider;

• Building ecosystems and not just programmes

• Gender responsive financing as a non-negotiable 

• Engineer with equity in mind. 

You can’t fix gender inequality in engineering with a scholarship alone. Women need entire ecosystems including networks, capital, mentorship, safe innovation spaces, and policy frameworks that support their full journey from education to enterprise. When women are embedded in communities that believe in their potential, they thrive.

If the enabling environment does not exist, we need to manufacture it. Most female engineers who want to become founders are locked out of capital. Even when they have the skills, they don’t fit traditional risk models or don’t get through male-dominated deal rooms. The G20 must advocate for alternative financing models that are not built on traditional evaluations such as collateral but rethinking how we develop alternative credit and risk score cards, leveraging the power of big data and AI to bridge the gap and fuel inclusive innovation.

We hear all too often how resilient female entrepreneurs are. Isn’t it about time the financial institutions reward the resilience rather than the focus on the perceived risks?

Climate resilience, digital transformation, and sustainable infrastructure are at the top of the G20 agenda—but who is engineering these solutions? If women are not designing for the problems we live through, we will build another generation of inequitable systems. A just transition must be a gendered one, and that starts with whose voices shape the tools, the technology, and the terms of progress.

It’s not enough to invite women in, we must dismantle the barriers, bias, and blind spots that keep us on the margins. For women of colour, the workplace burden of driving the transformation agenda and bearing the stigma of being token hires is real. And it is exacerbated by subtle sexism and the need to carry the unequal emotion and social workplace and primary carers in the family. This often results in limited career growth so that female engineers leave the workplace in search of better workplace environments until they leave the industry entirely.

While we celebrate the women who have defied the odds by breaking gender barriers, we must also be honest about how far we still have to go. G20 nations must lead by example by driving a transformation agenda in the workplace, because a world engineered by women is a world that works better for everyone.

*Naadiya Moosajee is an engineer by training, a serial entrepreneur and a member of B20 South Africa taskforce for Digital Transformation. She is the co-founder of Womhub and WomEng, developing women and girls in STEM. She is the founder of a cybersecurity start-up called Cybherfence. She was the B20 Saudi Arabia Co-Chair for the Future of Work and Education. She is an Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow Alumni. 

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.

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