Where are the women at WEF?

Women are a rare sight at the 45th WEF at Davos. Even as the world’s most prestigious global gathering of Political and business leaders is set to be convened for the 45th time to discuss path-breaking and liberal ideologies to shape the future, and the number of women attendees still hasn’t picked up.

World Economic Forum  meets in Davos this week, at the Swiss Alpine Resort has been advocated by the organizers as an event that shall give women a voice, and yet, sufficient representation evades them year after year. This rate has kept up for the past two years, writes the WEF.

Women Balance at WEF a far fetched thought?

According to a report in the Irish Times, this annual three day event invites 40 heads of state or government, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and 13 Nobel laureates. Yet, over all, amongst the 2500 attendees, only 17 per cent will be women. The Media and academia committees have the highest female participants, at 25 per cent, while private investors and energy industry leaders shall bring less than 10 percent women.

China and North America will have the highest women contingents, with women making up more than 20 per cent of their delegates. What could serve as a ray of hope is that the young entrants are defying the prevailing statistic- as 54 per cent of the forum’s Global Shapers committee of 50 leaders will be female.

“Women make up the majority of high-skilled talent,” said Saadia Zahidi to the Irish Times, head of the WEF Women Leaders and Gender Parity Program. “But everyone is struggling with how to get this right.”

Kim Samuel Johnson opines that this is representative of the dynamics in the larger picture, too. “The World Economic Forum statistics are not an exception; they reflect this broader social problem,” said Kim Samuel- Johnson, director of The Samuel Group of companies and a professor at McGill University in Canada. “I’ve been encouraged to see a lot more women here over the years in their own capacity as leaders and from a wide range of sectors.”

Six leaders co-chair the meeting, and among them two are women: Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima and Alliance Trust Plc CEO Katherine Garrett-Cox.

Original Source: Irish Times

Edited by Binjal Shah