David Rothkopf writes: Voices representing the disenfranchised may be hard to find but they are essential to addressing many of the issues being discussed at the World Economic Forum. But most egregious in my view is the continuing failure to fairly involve the majority population of the planet in these discussions. Davos is a man’s world.
This year the WEF attendees are 17 percent women. While this is the same percentage of women as you will find in the world’s legislatures and slightly more than the percentage you will find on corporate boards, it is not just appallingly low — it is inexcusable.
It is impossible to argue that the problem is that the event is for CEOs and top government officials and because only a small percentage of big-company CEOs and political leaders are women. According to the organizers, only 30 percent of the attendees are CEOs, and only 2 percent are top government officials. Further, look at the agenda: economics, politics, health, education, development, climate, combating extremism, stabilizing societies — you can’t have a serious discussion or effectively influence outcomes without including the perspectives of women.
But you have to start somewhere, and it seems reasonable to me to start with addressing the grossest of history’s social wrongs, the systematic repression of women by virtually all cultures.
How high-profile global gatherings like the World Economic Forum choose to act matters a lot. Bringing greater gender balance here would not only improve the discussion and the outcomes it produces, but it would send a powerful message. But it is clear that change will not happen without a concomitant effort to produce it from the event’s sponsors, its paying customers, and its keynote speakers. Companies that recognize a need for fair hiring practices and equal opportunity should send their female leaders here. Sponsors promoting great values should walk the talk. Explain that the failure to fix this issue, the failure to show real progress over the past few years, and the failure to make real balance the goal is inconsistent with who they are and sends a terrible message, and that they simply can’t be associated with this event unless change takes place. Speakers should say they won’t be on panels unless there is balance. Otherwise all are complicit — and with the attention the issue has gotten, they have to be viewed as not only being complicit, but intentionally so.
Like other elements of this strange, wonderful, perverse, and heartening event, the payoff is not in what happens here, but in how it translates into action worldwide. It is called the World Economic Forum, and it’s time its participants looked more like the world they are supposed to be improving.
