Davos: Where are the women? - Building Gender Balanced Business

On January 28 several thousand of the world’s leaders will meet at Davos at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meeting – this year it is entitled “Shaping the Post-Crisis World”. While the organisation calls on ordinary people to make contributions via YouTube videos, the event is restricted to invitees only and they are chosen in a mysterious process, based on the perceived importance of the individual. (This article has been published online by Business Week).

Women have clearly never made up a major part of the event – it was for this reason women organised their own “Davos” – the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society – held at Deauville, France every year.

But the probable absence of an equal balance of women to men in the World Economic Forum’s own leadership structure (which plans the topics that will be discussed at Davos and makes the ultimate decision about who to invite), suggests that the organisation itself has not caught up with the twenty first century.

There are only four women out of 22 on the Foundation Board (18%) and no women at all on the Managing Board. There are two women among the ten senior directors (20%). It is only lower down the management chain where you find the gender balance becomes healthier – 52% of the directors are women.

Of the Co-Chairs – very important figures who help to plan the Davos meeting – only one out of seven is a woman (Maria Ramos, the Chief Executive of the South African freight rail and pipelines company Transnet. Ramos announced recently that she had decided to step down from Transnet, after having turned the company around from a time when it had been – in her own words – a “value-destroying organ of the state”.)

“The number of women officially reigstered is 360 – and therefore 15% of the delegates are women – two percent less than in 2008.”

This dearth of women – and the talent and different perspectives they could bring – is also reflected in the Davos event itself. Our count from the list of delegates is that there are 213 women out of 2500. The WEF, however, has since informed WOMEN-omics that the number of women officially reigstered is 360 – and therefore 15% of the delegates are women (see below). This is two percent less than in 2008.

Why does this matter? There is one extremely good reason why it does, backed up by a whole range of research compiled in recent years by organisations such as McKinsey & Co, Goldman Sachs, the US research organisation Catalyst and others which shows that women are a huge missed economic opportunity.

There are three key strands to this. First, economies would benefit from a much better utilisation of women’s skills (now they are the majority of the most highly educated people). Since 2000, women filled 6 million of the 8 million new jobs created within the EU and represented 59% of the graduates. A UK report in 2006 produced by the Women and Work Commission estimated that the country could generate wealth to the tune of £23 billion (2% of GDP) by a better use of women’s skills.

The second point is that several compelling pieces of research have indicated that companies with higher numbers of women represented on their boards out-perform companies that have a relatively low number of women in senior management positions. One study by Catalyst (2007) of companies in the Fortune 500 concluded that companies with three or more women on their boards had an 83% greater return on equity than companies with the lowest representation of women. Such companies had a 73% better return on their sales and a staggering 112% higher return on invested capital.

“So, for three very good reasons (talent, leadership and markets), the issue of developing strategies to harness the female talent that is out there but not used fully, develop women to the higher echelons of management and reach women consumers more effectively should be at the top of the agenda at a meeting such as at Davos.”

Last, but certainly not least, companies are generally failing to tap into the growing influence women have as consumers. In the US, for example, women make 80% of the consumer purchasing decisions. There are many small marketing agencies that have sprung up – run usually by enterprising women – to help companies (usually run by men) to market and brand their products and services more effectively to women consumers. Those that do so reap the benefits of higher sales, for little extra cost. It is a “blue ocean” waiting to be discovered.

So, for three very good reasons (talent, leadership and markets), the issue of developing strategies to harness the female talent that is out there but not used fully, develop women to the higher echelons of management and reach women consumers more effectively should be at the top of the agenda at a meeting such as at Davos. Yet it appears to be no-where. It is certainly not an issue raised on its website. Instead, the experts and participants expect to talk about the economic crisis and how to pull out of it. What the WEF may be missing (apart from several hundred to a thousand women participants) is that the economic opportunity represented by women is one sure way that we can dig ourselves out of this economic crisis. Shouldn’t that be on the agenda?

This article has been published by Business Week Online

Saadia Zahidi, the Head of Constituents at the World Economic Forum has replied to my editorial (she has also submitted a response to the article published on the Business Week website).

Her detailed response covers the following points:

• The WEF works hard to attract a large number of the top leaders from public and private life from across the world, both men and women, to its annual meeting. In this it creates a unique mix of people to discuss key topics of global concern.
• The number of women attending the annual meeting is low but it is higher than the percentages found in the corporate world.
• The WEF is committed to the greater progress of women globally and their greater involvement at the higher reaches of government and business. As such it investigates the level of the gender gap in its Gender Gap Report and looks at corporate best practices on gender in another study.
• There are, in fact, discussions to take place at this year’s annual meeting on gender. They are: ‘The Girl Effect’ (how to improve the position of women in developing countries, which in turn will contribute to family income); Global Gender Parity Group annual meeting; and, a discussion on supporting women entrepreneurs in developing countries via microfinance.

The full response can viewed here.

Thank you very much for your detailed response to my article.

I fully accept the WEF manages many good projects and produces a number of important reports on this issue, and indeed we report on them.

But my main points were that the gender balance should be more equal within the internal organisation and the event itself if the organisation is to fully benefit from the different perspectives women can bring. (I notice that you do not mention the gender balance figures for this year’s Annual Meeting at Davos.)

While I accept that the percentages may not be far off those found in the marketplace and perhaps higher, in some cases, I still think organisations such as yours should make more effort to attract greater numbers of women leaders (above and beyond the market norm) even if that means going to the areas where they are currently over-represented (e.g. NGOs, entrepreneurs).

(A woman who was formerly a director at the WEF has since contacted us to say that the problem is not with the WEF, which is – she claims – extremely supportive of women in its internal organisation and makes every effort to get women leaders to attend its meetings, but with the supply side. She said: “There are not enough women in leadership positions – which you can’t blame the WEF for – and not enough women who are talented and engaging public speakers.”.)

Linked to that is the point that ‘women as an economic opportunity’ should not be a ‘nice to have’ but a key strategic imperative – which would boost GDP and corporate performance. In that light, the WEF’s annual meeting should make this one of its key issues to discuss, particularly at a time like this.

Do we need a new way to talk about this, related to right and left brain thinking? Andrea Learned writes in response to the WOMEN-omics article, Davos: Where are the women?