Labor rights outside formal employment are part of what the W20 USA Presidency is putting before G20 governments. Its Decent Work advocacy brief asks members to extend labor rights and social protection to women in informal and non-standard work, regardless of employment status. The request matters to business because informal work runs through supply chains, distribution networks and contract labor.
The scale of the issue
The brief says about 33% of employed women in the G20 are in informal employment. It also says women make up more than 40% of the G20 workforce. Globally, the W20’s Entrepreneurship brief cites International Labour Organization modeled estimates that about 58% of employed women are in the informal economy. The ILO says more than 60% of the world’s workforce and 80% of enterprises operate in the informal economy.
The W20 briefs carry a 2026 copyright and sit on the W20 homepage. They do not state a publication date, and the Decent Work brief does not give individual citations for its snapshot figures.
What the W20 is asking for
Recommendation 3 calls for gender-responsive pathways from informal to formal employment, while preventing informalization inside the formal economy. It asks governments to simplify access to contributory social insurance and to provide adequately financed non-contributory protection for workers with low or irregular incomes. It also asks that these workers have access to health care, pensions and childcare, and that informal workers’ organizations take part in designing policy.
The brief ties this to a wider goal. Its first recommendation asks governments to fund national strategies that reduce both the labor participation gap and the pay gap by 35% by 2035, a target it calls the W20 Johannesburg Goals. It puts the G20 participation gap at 18.0% in 2024 and the average unadjusted wage gap at 15.4% in 2022/23.
A separate recommendation addresses domestic workers. It asks for minimum wages, working-time protections, paid leave and effective remedies, and for ratification of ILO Conventions No. 189 and No. 190.
How this meets the G20 and B20 agendas
The U.S. presidency’s G20 site lists working groups on growth and deregulation, innovation, energy abundance and trade. It does not list a working group on gender or labor. The W20’s case therefore has to be made through those tracks or directly to leaders, who meet in Miami on December 14–15.
There is some overlap with business priorities. The B20 USA Leaders’ Statement includes caregiving investment and flexible employment within its workforce agenda, though it does not address informality in the same terms. The W20 documents page listed communiqués through South Africa 2025 when last checked, so the final 2026 wording is not yet public.
