Strategic Efforts Lead to More Women at Davos

Written by Jan Jaben-Eilon Wednesday, January 25 2012

Klaus Schwab (L), Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic, and Angela Merkel, Federal Chancellor of Germany, at World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, 2011.

Set amid towering white-capped forested Alps, the Davos, Switzerland mountain resort is readying for the Jan. 25-29 World Economic Forum to which the world’s most politically powerful and richest business people flock each year. This year, thanks to much effort, the percentage of women among those powerhouses will be the largest ever.

The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders in society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Female participation, according to The World Economic Forum, at this annual meeting will be at least 17 percent, up from 16 percent in 2011 and 9 percent in 2002. About 45 percent the women are from business, with the rest from other stakeholder groups. The organization said these participation figures reflect the scarcity of women in the external pool. For example, less than three percent of Fortune Global 500 CEOs are women, a little over 15 percent of ministerial positions and parliamentary positions are occupied by women and only 20 of the world’s presidents or prime ministers are women.

Still, that doesn’t mean the World Economic Forum isn’t trying to increase those numbers. Since 2006, the organization has produced the annual Global Gender Gap Report so that governments, business, media and civil society can measure and track the magnitude of the gender gap in more than 130 countries. Since 2008, the Forum has engaged leaders, both women and men, through its Gender Parity Groups to identify barriers to women’s economic participation and to design effective measures to remove barriers.

	Christine Lagarde - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2011

Three years ago, the Forum introduced a target to reach gender parity within the next five years in its community of Young Global Leaders. In 2005, this community had 28 percent female participation; that number has jumped to more than 40 percent. Starting two years ago, strategic partners select at least one female executive among the five high level-delegates they send to Davos. The strategic partners bring five delegates to the annual meeting and in total represent 500 of the 2,500 participants at the meeting. This is one of several measures the World Economic Forum has introduced to promote gender parity and, as a result, it has doubled the participation of female executives from strategic partners. Nearly 80 percent of strategic partners are bringing mixed-gender delegations, including companies with more than one senior female executive.

At this year’s annual meeting, women will comprise more than 20 percent of the speakers at the Davos program. A plenary session entitled Women as the Way Forward will discuss the potential impact of women on the global economy if the full potential of the demographic were to be realized through education and opportunity. Other public and private sessions will focus on managing diversity; new approaches to gender parity; women, war and peace; maternal health; and women’s leadership will round out the program.

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Check out these other stories on gender parity:

Women Flexing Leadership Muscles

2011 Global Gender Balance Scorecard

Out with Command and Control Leadership

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Jan Jaben-Eilon was a founding staff writer of the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Since then, she has been the international editor of Advertising Age magazine and has written for such publications as The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Washington Journalism Review, and Consumer Reports. She is the author of soon-to-be-published (There is) Life After Cancer. Jan and her husband have homes in Atlanta and Jerusalem.