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Forum report: Business failing to close the corporate gender gap

Leading companies are failing to capitalize on the talents of women in the workforce, according to the World Economic Forum’s Corporate Gender Gap Report 2010.

It's the first study to cover the world’s largest employers in 20 countries and benchmark them against the gender equality policies that most companies should have in place but are in fact widely missing.

Released on International Women's Day, 8 March, the report provides a guide on what firms need to do to close the corporate gender gap..

The findings of The Corporate Gender Gap Report are an alarm bell on International Women’s Day that the corporate world is not doing enough to achieve gender equality. While a certain set of companies in Scandinavia, the US and the UK are indeed leaders in integrating women, the idea that most corporations have become gender-balanced or women-friendly is still a myth. With this study, we are giving businesses a one-stop guide on what they need to do to close the corporate gender gap,” said Saadia Zahidi, Co-author of the report and head of the Forum’s Women Leaders and Gender Parity Programme.

The report is based on a survey of 600 heads of human resources at the world’s largest employers. The survey contained over 25 questions and assessed companies on representation of women within their establishments and the use of gender-equality practices such as measurement and target setting, work-life balance policies and mentorship and training. The survey also asked respondents to identify the biggest barriers to women’s leadership and their opinion on the probable effects of the economic downturn on women’s employment in their countries and industries.

The United States (52%), Spain (48%), Canada (46%) and Finland (44%) have the highest percentage of women employees at all levels among the responding companies. India is the country with the lowest percentage of women employees (23%), followed by Japan (24%), Turkey (26%) and Austria (29%).

At the industry level, the findings of the survey confirm that the services sector employs the greatest percentage of women employees. Within this sector, the financial services and insurance (60%), professional services (56%) and media and entertainment (42%) industries employ the greatest percentage of women. The sectors that display the lowest percentage of women in the 20 economies are automotive (18%), mining (18%) and agriculture (21%).

Read more.

Forum announces news class of Young Global Leaders

The World Economic Forum has announced the names of 197 people from 72 countries who are to join the Forum of Young Global Leaders in 2010. Each year the Forum of Young Global Leaders recognizes up to 200 outstanding leaders who are under the age of 40 for their professional accomplishments, commitment to society and potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world.

For 2010 the Forum has selected 197 Young Global Leaders from 72 countries and all stakeholders of society (business, societal, social entrepreneurs, political&government, arts&culture, and opinion&media).

The new class represents all regions: East Asia (43), South Asia (21), Europe (46), Middle East and North Africa (14), sub-Saharan Africa (17), North America (38), and Latin America (18) and this year’s selection has more gender parity than ever with 38% women.

Drawn from a pool of almost 5,000 candidates, the Young Global Leaders 2010 were chosen by a selection committee, chaired by H.M. Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, comprised of eminent international media leaders.

The Young Global Leaders 2010 reflect regional and stakeholder diversity. They include Agatha Sangma, Minister of State - Rural Development (from India), Roger Federer, Professional Tennis Player (from Switzerland), Evan Williams, CEO, Twitter (from the USA), Kimmie Weeks, Executive Director, Youth Action International (from Liberia), Nathalie van Ypersele, Editor-in-Chief, Trends-Tendances (from Belgium), Mandla Mandela, Member of Parliament of the South African National Congress (from South Africa), Wyclef Jean, Singer and Founder, Yélé Haiti Foundation (from Haiti), Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, Chief Executive Officer, Vestergaard Frandsen (from Denmark), Hidetoshi Nakata, Chairman, Take Action Foundation (from Japan), Nabil Alyousuf, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Dubai School of Government (from the United Arab Emirates) among others. 

The 2010 honourees will become part of the broader Forum of Young Global Leaders community that currently comprises 660 outstanding individuals. The Young Global Leaders meet annually and this year’s summit will be held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 2-7 May. It is the first time a summit will take place in Africa and it will also be the largest gathering of the community.

The group gathers at other World Economic Forum meetings throughout the year. These events enable Young Global Leaders to build a strong and diverse community, to engender a better understanding of the global and regional agendas and to join projects to tackle specific challenges of public interest. One example is the www.redesignourworld.com initiative which encompasses health, economic, education and governance projects.

Nominate a potential Young Global Leader for 2011 on our website or leave a comment below.

New Forum report sets out how sustainable consumption can transform business value

Natural resources are running ever lower while the world's population continues to climb higher. A global economy built on consumption is therefore a scary prospect.

CEOs in Davos representing a broad range of industries agreed that our global economy is at risk unless fundamental changes in the way we consume and produce products and services are made. A prosperous future depends on sustainable consumption - innovative new products and business models that achieve transformative efficiency and create new market opportunities.

To learn more, read their report "Redesigning Business Value: A Roadmap for Sustainable Consumption".

Tomorrow's businesses will meet the future by channelling their creativity to form markets that capture the emerging opportunities these shifts offer. The formula for business success during our era of great change will place a premium on innovation, collaboration and smart investments to shape a globally prosperous and sustainable future.

To build a future of sustainable consumption, we need:
- Collaborative innovation: Sustainability helps drive innovation and should be at the core of the design of products and services and the development of new business models. This can be brought about by new forms of collaboration along entire value chains.
- Lifecycle thinking: Resources are more valuable than ever, and the days of the linear value chain are numbered as we increasingly have the technologies and the will to measure our environmental impact across the entire lifecycle of a product and recover materials to embrace closed loops.
- Consumer engagement: To shift consumption patterns around the world, there needs to be a new supply of sustainable products and services, as well as a market pull for sustainable consumption, embraced by all 7 billion consumers globally.
- Investment: To spark a prosperous future, business needs to look beyond short-term pressures and focus on investment for the long term, working to build understanding among investors of the value at stake in long-term planning.

CEOs believe they have the potential to create new business models that build lasting prosperity for the many and not for the few; that make wise use of natural resources; that internalize social and environmental capital; and that focus on innovation to thrive in a low-carbon, dematerialized economy driving smarter consumption.

CEOs are working together through the World Economic Forum's platform to develop practical projects and partnerships, including workstreams on innovation, lifecycle metrics and consumer engagement.

Ahead lies a tremendous challenge, but also a great opportunity for those who meet it.

Randall Krantz, Associate Director, Environment Initiatives, World Economic Forum

Upcoming Forum Events and Reports 2010

Below is a list of the World Economic Forum’s upcoming meetings and major reports in 2010. Please also consult our events page on the Forum’s website here for updates in the future.

Date	Calendar of Events and Reports 2010	Location
4 March	Young Global Leaders Class of 2010	Geneva, Switzerland
25 March	Global Information Technology Report 2010	New York, USA
6-8 April	World Economic Forum on Latin America	Cartagena, Colombia
5-7 May	World Economic Forum on Africa	Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
10-11 May	World Economic Forum on Europe	Brussels, Belgium
30 May - 1 June	Word Economic Forum Global Redesign Summit	Doha, Qatar
6-7 June	World Economic Forum on East Asia	Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
9 September	Global Competitiveness Report 2010-2011	Geneva, Switzerland
13-15 September	Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2010	Tianjin, People’s Republic of China
20 October	Global Gender Gap Report 2010	New York, USA
26 - 28 October	World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa	Marrakech, Morocco
13-15 November	India Economic Summit	New Delhi, India
29 November - 1 December	Summit on the Global Agenda 2010	Dubai, United Arab Emirates
26 - 30 January 2011	World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2011	Davos-Klosters, Switzerland

Davos 2010 in numbers

The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010 has opened up to the wider world through the cutting edge use of social media. The global public had the opportunity to follow debates live, send their video and text comments in specific sessions and discuss on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Overall the Forum has reached a worldwide audience of 430 million readers online through the use of social networks.

Facebook

The Forum tapped into the collective wisdom of the 400 million strong Facebook crowd. In several key sessions, the social networking platform Facebook ran real-time pulses, polling over 200,000 people and bringing their views into the discussions at Davos. Check out how these Facebook polls were used in the NDTV debate in Davos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL9LKLNudAs#t=4m30s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL9LKLNudAs#t=31m45s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL9LKLNudAs#t=40m37s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL9LKLNudAs#t=1h00m04s

The World Economic Forum now has over 7,100 fans on Facebook.

Livestream

The Forum webcast all public sessions on Livestream reaching a cumulated audience of over 73,000 viewers. Press conferences were seen by over 36,000 people, and they could put questions to panellists via Twitter and Facebook

Twitter

Twitter was a-buzz during the Annual Meeting with over 250 participants and 120 journalists continuously sharing their impressions on the microblog. A Twitterwall allowed participants to see a running micro-commentary on the meeting as it progressed. The Forum live tweeted quotes from key sessions sending a total of 150 tweets during the five-day meeting. ‘Davos’, ‘WEF’ and ‘WorldEconomicForum’ were mentioned 30,000 times on Twitter. 1,551,130 people are now following the Forum on Twitter (http://twitter.com/davos), placing the World Economic Forum into the top 100 Twitter accounts worldwide. The Forum also tweeted in Chinese on the Sina microblog.

YouTube

The Davos Debates on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/davos) have been watched over 600,000 times. We have received countless questions from the global public which participants answered at a special video corner at the Congress Centre. Among the participants who came to the Davos Debates video booth were several heads of state and government such as the Felipe Calderón, President of Mexico, Abdoulaye Wade, President of Senegal, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, President of Colombia, George Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece, Abhisit Vejjajiva, Prime Minister of Thailand. Watch all of the responses here.

80 of the 220 sessions of the Annual Meeting were posted to YouTube (http://youtube.com/worldeconomicforum) and have been watched over 140,000 times.

Julia Lalla-Maharajh from End FGM Now, won the YouTube Davos Debates and spent a week in Davos meeting with world leaders including Bill Clinton. She brought the issue of female genital mutilation (FGM) to a special panel at the Annual Meeting which was also live-srteamed on YouTube.

MySpace

MySpace partnered with the Wall Street Journal to send Sloane Berrent as a “citizen reporter” to Davos. Check out Sloane’s reports on the ins and outs of the Annual Meeting at http://www.myspace.com/myspacejournal. The Forum now has 447 friends on MySpace.

Flickr

Over 350 pictures from the Annual Meeting shot by Swiss-Image and made available on Flickr.com http://www.flickr.com/worldeconomicforum have been viewed over 30,000 times during the week of the Annual Meeting.

Updated 11.02.2010

Davos Kick-off for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa

A truly Davos Moment,The Davos kick-off for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. The video says it all.

End Female Genital Mutilation Now campaign comes to Davos

More than three million girls’ genitals are forcibly cut every year and approximately 140 million women are living with mutilated genitals. Maternal mortality and infection are just two of the many health effects they suffer.

This issue of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) was brought to the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting by Julia Lalla-Maharajh who runs the campaign www.endfgmnow.org. Julia entered her cause into a competition run by the Forum and YouTube, The Davos Debates, to find a person with a cause worthy of the world's attention. Her FGM cause won the global vote.

“In tackling FGM, we can’t go in as an outsider and tell people what to do,” Julia said in the Davos session. “We need to listen to the community and dialogue with them about why they practice it, their perceptions and then share the facts to educate them – especially the health impacts.”

Ann Veneman, the executive director of UNICEF noted that 4,000 communities in Senegal have banned genital cutting as a result of community discussions starting with understanding the health impacts.

“There are 28 countries in Africa that practice female genital cutting but 19 of those have laws criminalizing it. And so it’s going to take a global campaign to stop it,” said Kathy Bushkin Calvin, CEO, United Nations Foundation.

Everyone agreed with Larry Cox, Executive Director, Amnesty International, that FGM is a human rights issue that both females and males need to fight, to protect the rights of the girl child.

They urge you, the global community, to do your bit to end FGM. Watch Julia’s pitch to the Davos Debates, support organizations like Tostan, lobby your MP. International Anti-FGM Day is on 6 February, a week from now. What do you want to do to help stop FGM now?

The Gender Agenda: Putting Parity into Practice

Two teams. One challenge. How can business put gender parity into practice?

The session was a CNBC debate that had its audience engaged and on edge. Presenter Ross Westgate started by laying out the fact that only 2% of Fortune 500 companies have a woman in charge, and if parity equals profits, where are the women?

Team One led by Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, Carlos Ghosn of Renault-Nissan Alliance and Orit Gadiesh, Chairman of Bain & Co, made the case for gender parity.

“Equality in the workplace makes good business sense,” Sorrell said. Ghosn explained the three steps all business leadership should take to make this a reality: “We need to explain why promoting gender diversity is good for business. We need to lead by example. And we need to entrench parity in the basic processes of hiring, appraisal and succession planning.” Gadiesh summed up by saying that gender parity has to be a strategic priority.

Team Two led by Arianna Huffington of Huffington Post, Muhtar Kent of Coca-Cola and Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, laid out some practical policies.

These included changing company culture. “Right now there’s so much stress to succeed that women are driven away from it. Women have internalised many stereotypes so they’re reluctant to be assertive and express ambition. We also have to educate women that there’s no success without failure and how to confront fears,” said Huffington.

Kent said 70% of Coke purchasers are women and companies need women employed to understand how best to serve their growing female customers. Change some of the processes that are more rigid, and help women especially with the issue of mobility.

The studio audience voted on their presentations and Team Two came up trumps. They then learned what the world thinks of the issue. In a special Facebook poll conducted for the session, participants learned that of 6,000 people polled, 80% of women and 63% of men don’t think gender parity in the workplace has been achieved.

Wrapping up the session was Saadia Zahidi, head of the World Economic Forum’s Women Leaders and Gender Parity Programme. “Women make up one half of the world’s resources, and it is imperative for healthy, prosperous and fair societies to engage them equally. And to do this I have three words: implementation, implementation, implementation,” Zahidi concluded.

Bill and Melinda Gates Pledge US$ 10 Billion in Call for "Decade of Vaccines"

Bill and Melinda Gates announced that their foundation will commit US$ 10 billion over the next 10 years to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the world’s poorest countries.

“We must make this the decade of vaccines,” said Bill Gates, speaking at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos.

“Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries.”

Bill and Melinda Gates were joined at the press conference by Julian Lob-Levyt, Chief Executive Officer of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (the GAVI Alliance), which was launched at the World Economic Forum 10 years ago this week.

Watch the press conference

Brazil’s President Lula Given World Economic Forum Global Statesmanship Award

On behalf of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazilian Minister of Foreign Relations Celso Amorim accepted the first Global Statesmanship Award at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010.

“This award increases my responsibility as a leader, and my country’s responsibility as an increasingly present and active player on the global scene,” Lula da Silva said in a prepared text read by Minister Amorim.

The address offered an overview of the accomplishments of the Lula da Silva administration since his first appearance at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos seven years ago.

He noted that “Thirty-one million Brazilians have joined the middle class and 20 million have been lifted out of absolute poverty” in that period.

“I would like to stress that the best policy for development is the fight against poverty,” he said. “It is also one of the best recipes for peace. And we found out, last year, that it is also a powerful shield against crises.”

Introducing the new Global Statesmanship Award, Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, praised President Lula for "His dynamism, courage, innovative and disciplined leadership were instrumental to deliver the results we all know about."

Watch the session