Manhattan investment banker Jane Gladstone unwrapped the eyeshades for her 10:45 p.m. Swiss International Airlines AG flight to Zurich last January, and then didn’t sleep a wink.
In the next seat was Michele Burns, chief executive officer of Mercer, a Marsh & McLennan Cos. consulting unit, and a Wal- Mart Stores Inc. director. They were both headed to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. They talked through the night about the mergers market and job growth.
“That’s a very Davos experience,” says Gladstone, who leads Evercore Partners Inc.’s financial services advisory business.
Gladstone and Burns will again be among the few women who will benefit from Davos, five days of panels, parties and private deal-making for 2,500 participants that have been a male domain for decades. The forum starts today.
The female quotient at what the WEF website bills as an “unrivaled platform to shape the global agenda” may be close to 20 percent this year, up from 16 percent last year, because of a new policy to attract more female executives.
That’s still not 30 percent, the level social scientists have found integrates women’s points of view into discussions, says Marie Wilson, author of “Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World” and founder of the White House Project for woman leaders.
“How can you set the global agenda and leave out half the population by not having them reasonably represented?” Wilson says. “Surely there are women who could make up a third of attendees.”
The proportion of women among Davos delegates has grown from about 9 percent since 2001 as organizers have sought to increase the numbers and added academicians to the program.
The challenge for WEF founder Klaus Schwab is maintaining the Davos brand, says Herminia Ibarra, a professor of organizational behavior at the business school INSEAD in Fountainebleau, France. CEOs from around the world attend for candid talks from heads of state and finance ministers or to run into bankers and billionaires on snowy streets, she says, and most of those are men.
“What makes Davos Davos is that Bill Gates and Richard Branson and the Nobel Prize winners are there,” Ibarra says. “Women are not at the top of non-profits, government or business, but you want the top people there. That’s the conundrum.”
Women run just 3 percent of the 500 biggest companies and lead fewer than 20 countries, according to the WEF.
“The reality is that there are very few women that occupy these positions,” says Saadia Zahidi, who heads the WEF’s Women Leaders and Gender Parity Programme. The forum’s goal is to have membership in its Young Global Leaders group of men and women under 40 to be at least half female within five years, up from 40 percent now, she says. “We know the next generation of leaders will have more women.”
Former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell says the obstacle to quicker progress is the WEF itself. “If you want to insist on only the CEOs and the very top people, you get the same-old, same- old, same-old,” says Campbell.
“They will give women another seat, but it’s not the same as making gender real,” she says. “If they were very serious, they could do ‘Who are the most interesting woman entrepreneurs?’ Don’t confuse Davos with something serious about changing the world agenda — it’s not.”
The lack of women in Davos may reflect how the coveted badges are doled out inside companies, says Ibarra.
Under the new policy, the WEF’s 100 strategic partners — companies including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Volkswagen AG that pay $500,000 or more annually to belong to the organization — receive a fifth delegate slot this year if they fill it with a woman. That is expected to more than double the number of women from those companies.
“It’s a nudge in the right direction,” Zahidi says.
