The World Economic Forum, an annual meeting in the reclusive mountains of Davos in Switzerland, is a swanky affair. An invite-only, black-tie, sipping-hundred-year-old-whiskey-while-tacking-down-billion-dollar-deals kind of swanky affair. It’s attended by prime ministers, bankers, business tycoons, and other movers and shakers of the global elite.
The only people who don’t attend, it seems, are women. Making up a maximum 17 percent of participants on any given year, their numbers have been paltry at best. That is, until now.
As the Guardian reports:
The forum’s “strategic partners”—a group of about 100 companies including Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank—have been told they must bring along at least one woman in every group of five senior executives sent to the high-profile event.
In short, the WEF is enacting a gender quota to avoid a perennial sausagefest.
Here’s Saadia Zahidi, head of the gender parity program:
The World Economic Forum annual meeting engages the highest levels of leadership from a variety of sectors, and participation figures are a reflection of the scarcity of women in this external pool.
The reactions to this new policy have varied. While some argue that this is a genuine effort by the WEF to inject some much-needed diversity into its elite ranks, others assert that the gesture feels empty without women having earned the right.
Perhaps the most insightful criticism is the claim that the WEF is only addressing a symptom, not the systemic lack of women in the business world as a whole. As Chris from Ameriblog states:
So far, the numbers have been pathetic. But of course, so are the numbers in the ranks of the “strategic partners” who dominate the event. The banking industry was always macho and since the crisis, it now has even fewer women in management. Northern Europe takes the issue seriously, but outside of there, few countries (the U.S. included) have made progress.
What do you think, readers? Is this move by the WEF pandering, or is it a step in the right direction? Is it a step in the wrong direction with the right intentions? You tell us.
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Pandering.
If women earn a spot at the convention, they’ll be there. Quotas are stupid and sexist.
Are these women who are being invited genuine business leaders or are they just “chumped-up” executive assistants? There is the question that everyone needs to ask. Will these women actually have something to contribute, or are they there just for window dressing to fill the quota?
This will not help the cause of resolving equity. What if a company is not ran by a sexist group of officers/managers, but it’s genuinely a case of where women have not aspired to reach executive level or are genuinely not qualified? Why should these companies be penalized?
This is similar to the new law being passed in France where the French government is making every corporation shift the balance of their board of directors so there is eventually 50-50 parity between male and female board members.
Three things are going to happen; corporations that can afford to do so, will leave France to avoid the policy. Others will create token board seats that will appease the law on paper. And finally, the ones that can or will not do either of the first two will go under because they will not be able to comply and remain functioning.
The first two choices will be responses from corporations who will resist having the government dictate who belongs on their governing boards. The final response will be from companies who mean well, but simply cannot find enough qualified women to be in compliance.
Let’s break this down; me and my five friends form a corporation. The six of us have worked to build it from scratch and raise it up into something that is remarkable and profitable. Then one day the government tells us that we are not being fair to women because there are none on our board of directors, so we have to add some or risk being fined.
We respond; “Uh…there were no women around when we formed this company. None of them were around when we were working out of our garage and hustling on the streets trying to get the seed money to start this thing. But now, we have to share our profits with some women who had no stake or involvement in what we built because it unfair to them?”
This is what the problem is; forcing people to give away what they have worked for and/or built to appease some sense of “fairness” is only going to create resentment and eventually socio-economic dissent. While a some smaller corporations will comply with these rulings, others will exploit loopholes, create false fronts to circumvent the rules, or just avoid the field by leaving countries that enforce these laws, taking jobs and capital away from them. The next response I see from measures like this are companies seeking “extraterritorial status” from smaller countries that are willing to grant it in exchange for an influx of cash
And what will the EU do when one of the corporations that chooses to defy this law is one of their major players, like a bank or a major industrial complex that provides military materiel?
There are better ways to promote diversity within corporations than draconian measures like this.
If the forum can invite 94 faith healers to the forum, then I have no problem with a quota system that allows women to be better represented given their real contribution to industry. I have worked with countless women within organisations and the effort they put into their work is phenomenal, they are ambitious, motivated and highly capable, and I find it hard believing that in this day and age, there are concerns being expressed about how women have nothing to contribute. Women work hard, and because they are not in positions of high power or visibility does not mean that they have nothing to contribute to the forum. Faith healers may be relevant, but I think it is an insult to suggest that women are not.
Of course it’s pandering, it’s not equality of opportunity but rather equality of outcome.
Where is the evidence of discrimination?
Are there as many women willing to give up their private lives to reach for the top?
Is there any evidence or certainty that a quota system will ensure the best people are in attendance?
It’s just feminist theory, but short on evidence.
Of course it’s a good idea. It’s a demand that companies who participate (and they can decide not to, so no-one is forced to anything) get out of the habit of looking for the right *man* to send when picking teams for things like that. And, no – big corporations like Goldman-Sachs will not be in the situation that they have no qualified women around. It’s a call to think differently, a call that will hopefully nudge the companies in the right direction. Remember that the Davos meeting is specifically about thinking different, stepping out of the box, and finding strategies to tackle large-scale challenges for out societies. Something like this is exactly the right thing to do.
Note that it’s not a call for 50-50 – the WEF only ask for one woman in a team of five. Neither is it a requirement that these companies have such-and-such a gender balance in their management team, board of directors, or anything like it. It’s just the team for the Davos.
To those who are all up in arms about how it’s not fair, does not pick the best team, robs men who worked hard of a chance, etc.: Chill. Accept that change happens, will continue to happen, and that if we are to have progress, we must experiment. Don’t act like little boys who didn’t get your share of the candy.
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