Davos: The women are there, says WEF - Building Gender Balanced Business

The World Economic Forum would like to submit the following clarifications and corrections in response to your article dated 23 January and titled Where are the women?

Firstly, in answer to the question you posed, the world’s women leaders are arriving here in Davos, Switzerland, to participate in the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2009. Allow me to explain further.

1. The criteria for admission to World Economic Forum is based on the Forum’s efforts to bring together the most influential leaders from business, politics, media, academia, and civil society together into dialogue to shape regional, industry and global agendas and address the biggest challenges of our time. These leaders include the CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies, heads of state and ministers, heads of major media outlets, university presidents, world-renowned professors, the heads of the world’s biggest NGOs and trade unions,social entrepreneurs and religious leaders. The unparalleled level of leaders from all stakeholder groups – both men and women – make the World Economic Forum and the Annual Meeting in Davos unique.
2. The reality of world’s very top leadership at a global scale is that 12 Fortune Global 500 companies are led by women CEOs (2.4%), 24 Fortune 1000 companies are led by women CEOs (2.4%), there are only 11 current elected women heads of government and women make up 15% of ministers globally.
   These percentages are slightly higher among leading academics, media leaders and NGOs.
3. Within the constraints of the criteria to engage the world’s current top leadership from the stakeholder groups mentioned above, every effort is made to engage the women holding these offices in each of these groups.
   Considering the current state of women’s leadership within the world’s largest businesses, non-governmental organizations, universities, governments, etc, the World Economic Forum has in fact gone above and beyond these averages during the last few years: in 2001, we had 9% women at the Annual Meeting; in 2008, this statistic was 17%.
4. Women make up one half of the world’s human resources and it is vital that gender gaps at all levels are closed, for equity as well as efficiency. This includes gaps in education, gaps in health, gaps in political participation (including senior political leadership) and economic participation (including senior business leadership). The World Economic Forum is deeply committed to closing these gender gaps through its Women Leaders and Gender Parity Programme.
5. Measuring the size of the problem is a prerequisite for identifying the best solutions. The Women Leaders and Gender Parity Programme produces two key pieces of research to benchmark gender gaps.
   - The Global Gender Gap Report, launched in 2006. In three years, the report has become well-established as a benchmarking tool for policymakers, academic institutions, the media, and business leaders.
   - The Corporate Best Practices for Gender Equality Report. This will assess the practices that successfully promote gender equality in the corporate world by conducting a comprehensive survey of the 100 largest companies in each of the OECD and BRIC countries (over 3000 companies). This report will be launched publicly in the spring of 2009, although preliminary results will be released at the Annual Meeting 2009.
6. The Women Leaders and Gender Parity Programme also seeks to engage leaders at World Economic Forum events and activities to narrow gender gaps.

“The World Economic Forum has in fact gone above and beyond these averages during the last few years: in 2001, we had 9% women at the Annual Meeting; in 2008, this statistic was 17%.”

The Forum does this through the following communities:

- Global Gender Parity Group, a multistakeholder community of 100 highly influential and committed leaders who believe that companies and countries will benefit by addressing the gender gap and optimizing the flow of talent. – Regional Gender Parity Groups: The World Economic Forum’s Regional Gender Parity Groups, multistakeholder communities committed to closing the gender gap, covering Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. – Women Leaders Community: The Women Leaders Community is drawn from the female participants of the various stakeholder groups convened at the World Economic Forum, brought together to collectively engage in dialogue and address current gender and diversity issues.

At this year’s Annual Meeting, gender parity is on the agenda yet again.

This includes the following sessions:

• The Girl Effect on Development. An educated girl will invest 90% of her future income in her family, yet little more than half a cent of every international development dollar is spent on her. This discussion explores what needs to be done to realize the potential of the “girl effect” on developing economies worldwide.
• The Global Gender Parity Group Annual Meeting. Amidst the current economic crisis, the question of competitiveness has taken a new turn – leaders are looking at new mechanisms for retaining and recruiting top talent in a tough environment. One key component of this process will be to ensure that women’s talents are not only retained during the current economic climate, but are better capitalized to generate optimal solutions.
  It will explore various questions relating to the barriers to implementing gender parity so far, the practices that have worked best and how organizations can take advantage of the current trend for restructuring to accelerate improvements in gender equality.
• Women and Entrepreneurship. Women entrepreneurs are a vital source of income and economic growth in communities around the world, yet these businesses are often limited in scale. It will look into what institutions, mechanisms and partnerships are needed to scale up these micro-businesses into small enterprises.

I warmly welcome the opportunity to continue the dialogue with you on our shared passion of greater gender equality.

Saadia Zahidi is the Head of Constituents at the World Economic Forum.

Further information
Women Leaders and Gender Parity Programme
Global Gender Gap Report

Editor’s Reply

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.