Cape Town – As the world converges on South Africa for the 2025 G20 Johannesburg Summit, a major civil-society action has been launched by the organisation Women For Change (WFC).
According to WFC, on Friday 21 November 2025 — the day before the G20 summit begins — women (and members of the LGBTQI+ community) across South Africa will refrain from all paid and unpaid work in homes, workplaces, universities and communities to demonstrate their collective social and economic power.
The driving rationale, as reported by WFC, is frustration at the failure to halt the country’s entrenched crisis of gender-based violence and femicide.
“Every 2.5 hours, a woman is killed in South Africa. Our silence has been met with inaction. Now, our silence will be our protest,” said WFC’s Founder and Executive Director, Sabrina Walter.
WFC describes this action, which it calls the “G20 Women’s Shutdown”, as “a national reckoning and a global call to conscience”. It emphasises: “Because without women, there is no economy. Because until South Africa stops burying a woman every 2.5 hours, the G20 cannot speak of growth or progress.”
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In April 2025, WFC submitted a petition to the South African government asking for gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) to be declared a National Disaster. As of the organisation’s announcement, WFC said that petition had grown to more than 200,000 signatures — yet no meaningful government response or accountability has been forthcoming.
WFC is also appealing to businesses, corporates, political parties and civil-society organisations to stand in solidarity by granting women and LGBTQI+ employees a paid day of solidarity leave on 21 November and by supporting participation in the shutdown.
The timing of the action coincides with South Africa’s hosting of the G20 for the first time on African soil (22-23 November 2025). The summit formally takes place at the Nasrec Expo Centre in Johannesburg.
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Compiled by Lisabeal Nqamqhele
