OSAKA: Saudi Arabia joined an initiative on women’s empowerment at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.

The Kingdom signed a pledge to promote participation in the workforce, enhance education and stimulate involvement in the small to medium business sector.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced the initiative under the motto “women are able to shine,” on the closing day of the summit. He said: “The G20 members will make a united effort to promote women’s empowerment. I believe that these efforts will be a driving force for further development of the G20 as a whole.”

Saudi Arabia is one of the members of the “troika” that organizes the W20 offshoot to promote female participation in economics and politics.

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, the UN’s special advocate for inclusive finance, said: “I want to thank the troika, Argentina, Japan and Saudi Arabia, for supporting this important initiative to promote inclusive economic growth for women.”

FAST FACT The initiative aims to reduce the gap between male and female pay by a quarter in the next seven years.

She said that if women were employed in the global workforce at the same rate as men, it could add $28 trillion to the global GDP by 2025.

The initiative aims to reduce the gap between male and female pay by a quarter in the next seven years.

It also hopes to guarantee access to education for all women in the world for at least 12 years. Japan is paying to educate 4 million girls in developing countries for the next three years.

The initiative will also seek to support female small businesses via the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) launched by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump.