President of Markle Foundation, Zoë Baird, on Gender Imbalance at WEF
Women make up just 21% of attendees at the World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of elite politicians, central bankers and financiers in Davos, Switzerland. Most of the panels at the summit are also dominated by men. The stark gender imbalance has been a major topic of discussion at the 2018 edition of the exclusive forum, a reckoning fueled by the #MeToo movement and widespread revelations of harassment by powerful men in media, entertainment, government and finance.
Zoë Baird, president of the Markle Foundation, said there were noticeably fewer women when she first came to Davos 17 years ago. But she said that organizers could do much more to correct the gender imbalance.
Baird said that women stick together in Davos, seeking each other out and trying to "give the floor to each other." But when she spoke to representatives from consumer brands on Wednesday, only one of the roughly 50 chief executives in the room was a woman...