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GEAC 2025

Gender Equality Advisory Council Impact Assessment Report


Executive Summary

The Gender Equality Advisory Council (GEAC) was first established under Canada’s G7 Presidency in 2018 as an independent body to advise G7 leaders and ministers on advancing gender equality in the G7 and beyond. GEAC has since become an established feature of the G7.

During its 2025 G7 Presidency, Canada conducted an impact assessment of GEAC to understand how it has shaped G7 outcomes to advance gender equality, to review working methods, and to capture best practices. The assessment, which focuses on the 2018 to 2024 period, includes the following findings:

The mere fact that GEAC is still being convened—seven years after it was first created—demonstrates some level of success and the G7’s commitment to gender equality during this time.

“Over the years, the reflections of the GEAC have provided essential guidance, improving the G7’s ability to promote effective commitments and policies. This collaboration has strengthened the G7’s role as a key player in the global effort to improve the conditions and lives of women and girls.”

Eugenia Roccella, Italy’s Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities

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Objective

The objective of the impact assessment was to take stock of GEAC’s impact over the past seven years and review its working methods to capture best practices and develop a set of recommendations to further strengthen GEAC as a vehicle for advancing gender equality in the G7. The assessment sought to answer the following broad questions:

The assessment’s findings and recommendations are presented in this report for consideration by future G7 presidencies.

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Methodology

The Government of Canada conducted the assessment between April and July 2025. The assessment was based on:

Stakeholders included G7 government officials from former GEAC secretariats and sherpa teams, former and current GEAC chairs and members, representatives of the Women 7 (W7) G7 engagement group, an independent consultant who supported two GEAC secretariats, and a member of the University of Toronto’s G7 Research Group.

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Constraints

Many factors shape G7 outcomes, including those related to gender equality. Therefore, even when a GEAC recommendation is reflected in a commitment in a G7 outcome document, it can be difficult to demonstrate causation versus correlation, as the commitment may also reflect a broader G7 priority.

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Background

The first time G7 leaders addressed gender equality as an issue was at the 1990 summit in Houston, U.S.A., and the first time they made a gender-related commitment was at the 1996 summit in Lyon, France. The leaders’ attention to gender equality increased over the years, and, in 2018, they made a record 82 gender equality commitments at the G7 summit in Charlevoix, Canada.2

That year, Canada’s G7 Presidency made gender equality and women’s empowerment one of its 5 overarching priorities. GEAC was established to “promote a transformative G7 agenda” and support leaders and ministers in ensuring that gender equality and gender-based analysis were integrated across all G7 priorities, activities and outcomes.

GEAC was set up as an independent advisory body composed of 22 members, including two co-chairs, all participating on an honorary basis. Members were selected based on their achievements, commitment to advancing gender equality and capacity to influence public discourse. GEAC members were invited to a 90-minute discussion with leaders at the Charlevoix summit, and select members, depending on their expertise, were also invited to participate in parts of the ministerial meetings organized throughout the year.

GEAC was supported by a dedicated secretariat co-located with the sherpa office, and staffed by 5 government officials. The secretariat was an essential link between GEAC and Canada’s G7 Presidency, and supported GEAC meetings, its review of G7 outcome documents, its members’ participation in G7 meetings, and the development of its recommendations.

Successive G7 presidencies continued to convene GEAC (except in 2020, when there was no summit). GEAC thereby became an established feature of the G7, with terms of reference and multi-year membership appointments to ensure that a coherent approach to gender equality is taken across G7 presidencies. In 2023, G7 officials agreed on formal terms of reference, which state that GEAC “is to be convened under each G7 Presidency as an advisory body to the Presidency on issues of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in all their diversity.” At the Carbis Bay and Elmau summits, leaders also indicated that they intended to convene GEAC as a standing feature of all G7 presidencies. This establishment of GEAC points to the value that G7 members place on it as an important feature of the G7 Presidency cycle.

Since 2018, GEAC membership has ranged between 16 and 35 individuals. Its recommendations have varied over time, and have generally become more targeted. For example, in 2019, GEAC focused on legislative reform, and in 2021, its focus was recovery from the COVID-19 global pandemic. The approach taken in 2018—to have GEAC attend G7 meetings—continued, but has become increasingly less systematic and more selective over the years. For example, recently, the Presidency has invited members to the gender equality ministerial meeting only, or it has invited only the chair to meet with the Presidency’s leader to present GEAC’s recommendations.

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G7 Gender Equality Commitments and Compliance

The G7 Research Group,3 based at the University of Toronto, tracks G7 leaders’ commitments, including those related to gender equality, and has demonstrated how the G7’s attention to gender equality has varied over the years. Although the first gender equality commitment appeared in 1996, gender became a regular agenda item starting in 2009 (except in 2020). Measured as a percentage of the total number of leader-level commitments, the gender equality share was initially low, but increased steadily from 2013 and peaked in 2018 and 2019. Between 2021 and 2024, leader-level commitments related to gender stabilized at 6% to 8% of the total number of summit commitments. In 2016, the G7 began releasing stand-alone documents on gender equality, but this practice ended after 2019.

The following graph excludes the years when leaders did not make any gender equality commitments. It shows the number of gender equality commitments (on the left side of the graph), as well as their percentage of all commitments made that year and the G7’s compliance with the gender equality commitments (on the right side). The G7 Research Group defines commitments as publicly and collectively made statements of intent by summit members that are discrete, specific and future-oriented.

Chart 1. G7 Gender Equality Commitments and Compliance

Chart 1. Graph Description

  • Vertical bars representing the number of gender equality commitments made at each summit. The bars are very low between 1996 and 2015, mostly under 10 commitments each. A sharp increase begins at the 2016 Ise-Shima summit (around 30 commitments). The bar increases again at the 2017 Taormina summit (about 50 commitments) and peaks at the 2018 Charlevoix summit, with approximately 80 commitments. After 2018, the number of commitments remains higher than pre-2016 levels, fluctuating between 20 and 50 commitments through to 2025.
  • A solid green line shows the percentage of total commitments that relate to gender equality. This line is near zero before 2016. It rises sharply around 2017 and 2018, and reaches its highest point at Charlevoix. It then declines gradually but stays above earlier levels.
  • A dashed blue line represents the compliance rate as a percentage. This line fluctuates between roughly 50% and 100% across all years, with peaks at the 2003 Evian, 2013 Lough Erne and 2018 Charlevoix summits, and dips near the 2012 Camp David and 2016 Ise-Shima summits.

There is a note above the 2018 Charlevoix summit that reads “GEAC Established,” marking the creation of the Gender Equality Advisory Council and coinciding with the sharp rise in commitments.

Overall, the chart shows that gender equality commitments were minimal before 2016, that they surged dramatically after GEAC was established in 2018, and that compliance rates remained variable throughout the period.

Although the assessment covered only the first GEAC cycle (2018 to 2024), it notes that gender also received some attention in 2025, with leaders making 4 gender equality commitments at the 2025 Kananaskis summit.

Just as the number of gender equality commitments has shifted over time, so has the rate of the G7’s compliance with these commitments. The G7 Research Group analyzes G7 compliance with commitments by looking at G7 members’ compliance over the one-year period following the summit. It uses a three-point scale.4 According to its research, compliance with gender equality commitments averages 75% but has shifted greatly over the years, although this is not necessarily related to the number of commitments made. For example, compliance was at 47% in 2016, 93% in 2018 and 100% in 2021. Although the impact assessment did not explore GEAC’s impact on actual results “on the ground,” according to research, holding a gender equality ministerial meeting before the summit and the existence of gender-related institutional bodies like GEAC have had a positive impact on compliance.5 Other catalysts include leaders setting concrete targets, allocating funding to their commitments and complementing commitments with language on implementation, references to prior summit commitments and supporting data.

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The Gender Equality Advisory Council’s Impact

A text comparison between GEAC’s recommendations and leader-level outcome documents for the 2018 to 2024 period demonstrates a notable overlap in terms of GEAC’s recommendations and the leaders’ gender equality commitments. Each year (except 2020), leaders made commitments in some of the gender equality areas that GEAC addressed, which shows there is a correlation between GEAC’s recommendations and G7 commitments. These commitments were related to education, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and digital inclusion, women’s economic empowerment, sexual and gender-based violence, including in conflict and digital contexts, climate change and the care economy, among other things. GEAC’s recommendations are listed in Annex?B.

In several of these areas, the language was specific enough to indicate causality, and stakeholder interviews confirmed that a GEAC recommendation had translated directly into leader-level commitments or actions in some instances.

In 2021, GEAC recommended the development of a new international convention to address conflict-related sexual violence. In response, the G7 leaders invited Foreign and Development ministers to consider how to best strengthen the international architecture around conflict-related sexual violence. The U.K. subsequently led efforts to this effect. Although it could not secure international support for a new convention, it took other initiatives to strengthen the global response to conflict-related sexual violence within its Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative.

In 2021, GEAC also stressed the importance of rebuilding global education for girls in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the U.K. pledged £430 million in new aid to help children who were the most vulnerable, particularly girls, access to school, and he used the first session of the G7 summit to rally world leaders to “build back better for all.”

“The challenges we discussed in Carbis Bay this summer—of building back better from Coronavirus, and creating a greener, more prosperous future for us all—will simply not be met if half the world’s people are unable to play their part, which is why I convened a Gender Equality Advisory Council to help put women and girls at the heart of the U.K.’s G7 Presidency. I’m enormously grateful to everyone involved for helping us do just that, particularly GEAC Chair Sarah Sands and Nobel laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege for addressing us at the summit back in June. And I’m delighted to see the concrete G7 commitments that came about as a result, including on tackling sexual violence in conflict, boosting the number of girls in school and fixing the under-representation of women in STEM.”

The Right Honourable Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

In 2022, GEAC’s repeated recommendation to measure G7 progress on advancing gender equality translated into a leader-level commitment to establish the G7 Dashboard on Gender Gaps (which W7 had also recommended). The dashboard was established in 2022 and has produced annual data ever since. It is a collaboration between the G7 Presidency and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

“I am grateful to the G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council (GEAC) for providing us with the impetus to develop this highly relevant and timely tool [G7 Dashboard on Gender Gaps]. We need humanity’s full potential for the tasks that lie ahead of us, potential that includes the strength, the ideas, and the knowledge of the world’s four billion women and girls.”

Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany

The G7 Dashboard on Gender Gaps, adopted in 2022, uses a framework of agreed indicators to measure G7 progress on gender equality commitments and identify remaining gaps. It is updated annually by the OECD in collaboration with the G7 Presidency.

In a few other instances, the language in the leaders’ commitments was specific enough to suggest causation or, at least, demonstrate a strong correlation with GEAC recommendations. For example, in 2018, GEAC called on G7 leaders to “provide policy and funding support to developing and conflict-affected countries to improve access to a minimum of 12 years of free, safe, quality and gender-responsive education.” This aligned with the recommendations of GEAC member Malala Yousafzai, a global advocate for girls’ education. That same year, G7 leaders adopted the landmark Charlevoix Declaration on Quality Education for Girls, Adolescent Girls and Women in Developing Countries, and committed to increase access to at least 12 years of education for all and to dismantle the barriers to girls’ and women’s quality education, particularly in emergencies and in conflict-affected and fragile states. In 2021, GEAC recommended that G7 leaders support the Equal by 30 Campaign, which was launched in 2018 with the support of then-GEAC co-chair Isabelle Hudon. The 2021 summit communiqué subsequently noted: “We will continue our efforts to progress the Equal by 30 Campaign for gender equality in the energy sector.”

While the assessment focuses on the leaders’ track, it also notes examples of significant overlap between GEAC’s recommendations and commitments made at the ministerial level; in some cases, these indicated correlation. Most notably, ministers responsible for gender equality have made commitments that align with GEAC’s priorities, including commitments related to care work, women’s economic empowerment, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. These ministers have also mentioned GEAC in their commitments and welcomed its recommendations. For instance, in 2019, gender ministers said they would “work towards a Partnership for Gender Equality, with support from the Gender Equality Advisory Council, aimed at making individual commitments towards improving the legal and policy framework.”

In addition to GEAC’s recommendations, there are several factors that contribute to the development of G7 gender equality commitments. Most importantly, the agenda is shaped by the G7 presidency, which plays a key role in deciding whether gender equality will be a focus—as it was in 2018 and 2019—and, if so, which gender gaps will be addressed. Given that the G7 is a consensus-based group, these decisions go beyond the G7 Presidency’s own values and priorities, and encompass those of other G7 members. The G7 agenda and final outcomes are also informed by external stakeholders, including, for example, G7 engagement groups like the W7.

GEAC’s efficacy also depends on the level of support it receives from the G7 Presidency, which determines how much information is shared with GEAC, including information related to G7 priorities and initiatives. Access to this information early on allows GEAC to align its recommendations with the G7 agenda, thereby increasing the chances of uptake. The G7 Presidency also determines how much access GEAC has to G7 decision makers, including leaders, ministers, sherpas and other senior officials. It also determines whether GEAC members will be invited to review draft outcome documents. The assessment shows that access in both instances is essential for GEAC to have an impact. For example, during Canada’s 2018 G7 Presidency, GEAC members were asked to sign confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements so they could have access to priorities before they were made public, and could review draft outcome documents. Finally, the G7 Presidency produces the zero drafts and leads the negotiation of G7 outcome documents, and therefore plays a critical role in deciding to what extent GEAC recommendations are translated into G7 commitments.

Although the assessment demonstrates that GEAC can influence outcomes, ultimately, no matter how accomplished and engaged its members are, its influence depends on the support and receptivity of the G7 Presidency and other G7 members.

The assessment also shows that GEAC provides a unique platform for discussing gender equality issues within the G7. Once GEAC is convened, there is an expectation that the G7 will consider the gendered dimensions of issues on its agenda, which adds a level of pressure on the G7 Presidency to deliver concrete outcomes. But GEAC also helps keep these issues on the agenda, regardless of actual outcomes.

Finally, the fact that GEAC is convened year after year can be interpreted as confirmation of the G7’s fundamental commitment to gender equality during the period covered by this assessment.

“We, Leaders, recognize that gender equality is fundamental to full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and the achievement of sustainable development and peace. We welcome the Paris Declaration on Gender Equality adopted by Ministers for Gender Equality of the G7 in May 2019. We were briefed by representatives from the Gender Equality Advisory Council. We underline the importance of meaningful consultation with the civil society at large to address good practices of new and innovative laws for gender equality.”

G7 Leaders’ Declaration on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment

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The Gender Equality Advisory Council’s Strengths and Challenges

Stakeholders identified numerous strengths and challenges that shape GEAC’s effectiveness.

Strengths

“You cannot implement what you cannot measure.”

Isabelle Hudon, 2018 GEAC Chair

Challenges

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Stakeholder Recommendations to Maximize the Gender Equality Advisory Council’s Impact

As part of the assessment, stakeholders identified several recommendations to maximize GEAC’s impact and ensure stronger gender equality outcomes in the G7.

Recommendations for the G7 Presidency

Planning

G7 Dashboard on Gender Gaps

Recommendations for the Gender Equality Advisory Council Secretariat:

Membership Appointments

GEAC Working Methods

Recommendations for the Gender Equality Advisory Council chair:

Recommendations for the Secretariat and Gender Equality Advisory Council chair:

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Annex A – GEAC Impact Assessment: Interview Questions

  1. Did the G7 Presidency articulate a clear vision for GEAC’s role and participation modality?

  2. In your view, how effective was GEAC in ensuring that gender equality considerations were part of the G7 Presidency process and outcomes? Did you feel that GEAC’s work/recommendations influenced/were relevant in terms of ministerial- or leader-level commitments and outcomes? Can you give any specific examples?

    1. If yes, what factors supported the achievement of these results (for example, organizational elements in terms of access to decision makers and ability to advocate for GEAC, frequency or format of meetings, access to decision makers, secretarial support, influence of individual GEAC members and collaboration with civil society)?

    2. If no, what were the barriers?

  3. What are GEAC’s greatest strengths? What areas could be improved?

  4. In the context of the growing backlash against progressive gender equality goals in various multilateral forums, how important and relevant is GEAC to the G7’s work and why?

  5. Do you have any other comments you would like to share with us?

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Annex B – List of GEAC Reports and Recommendations

Source: Official website of Canada's 2025 G7 presidency


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