A page detailing the hard facts on gender confronts visitors to a Saudi academic’s office. It is sellotaped to the door. The page comes from the Global Gender Gap Report the World Economic Forum produces every year to inform the global debate on women. The last time I went home to Pakistan, I had the report quoted back to me by a campaigner for women’s rights who did not know I co-authored it. Information is empowering – it’s a vital tool in the hands of those striving to make change.
This year in Davos, Switzerland, 400 of the world’s most powerful and influential women will gather for the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting. Co-chaired by Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Judith Rodin and including Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, South Korea’s President Park Guen-hye, and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg among participants, the impressive list goes on.
But our annual report is labelled the “Gender Gap” for a reason. The world is far from gender parity when it comes to getting women into leadership positions in any area of life, whether we are talking about government, business, civil society or the media.
See full Press Release: http://forumblog.org/2014/01/hard-facts-gender/
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