 No country in the world can yet say that they have achieved gender equality. No one in the 21st century should have to fight to gain the right to equality as a woman. I'm focusing on women's rights and girls' education because they're suffering the most. Right now there are more than 62 million girls around the world who are not in school. We've closed the education gap in North America, but when you look more broadly, the Middle East, the MENA region, those expanses get much larger. Women are not making it to the top of any profession anywhere in the world. If we look at the Fortune 500, women are about 4% of the CEOs. The FTSE 100 in Great Britain is about 6%. We have not been able to crack that ceiling to effectively utilize the talent we have. There is an objectification which is women don't have enough value to a film or a project, and hence they don't need to be paid as much as a man. When we talk about equal pay, when we look at it at the global level, men are making on average about $20,000 and women are making about $11,000. Anyone who's not being very proactive to ensure that their company is being thoughtful about the gender mix is simply going to fall behind. One of the priorities for you was to have a cabinet that was gender balanced. Why was that so important to you? Because it's 2015. We have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but someday someone will and hopefully sooner than we might think right now. Across the globe today, we see 19 women who serve as elected leaders as either head of government or head of state. When we look at parliaments, we're doing quite a bit better at 23%, and the trend line is in the right direction. My whole life has been one around breaking glass ceilings myself in the hope that other women will also pass through the shards of glass to take their position as full and equal participants in societies, politics, economies with equal rights and opportunity under the law. More and more women today are coming alive, diversifying their career paths, defying the narrow expectations the world has in place for them. We want to end gender inequality, and to do this, we need everyone involved. Human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights once and for all. Thanks everyone for being here. My name is Enrique Acevedo. I work for Univision, a US-based company and the largest Spanish-language media platform in the world. I also work as a special correspondent for the Fusion Media Group, a company that was created around the power of diversity. I want to take this opportunity to welcome audiences following us live on these platforms around the world. We are also very excited that this panel is kicking off a new initiative. It's called Fusion Fights. Over the next few months, Fusion will be generating content that works to elevate the conversation around social justice issues, of course gender equality, gender justice. At the center of that, we'll also be talking about economic justice, environmental justice and civil rights, and we're kicking off that with this panel, so we're excited about that. Our discussion today is called Disrupting the Status Quo of Gender, and I would like to start with a personal note, something that doesn't happen very often here at Davos. My wife, Frontina and I were expecting our first baby. We haven't told anyone about our friends, but now we're sharing that with you. I don't think she's very happy about it, but... I only mention that because according to a new World Economic Forum report, just released this week, our baby will be 83 years old by the time the gender gap is supposedly closing. 83 years old, think about that. We have achieved a better understanding, some consensus around the importance of gender equality, but we're not moving the needle fast enough. Take the World Economic Forum as an example. They introduced a quota, a gender quota in 2011, and we have moved from 5-9% of the total participants being women at the beginning of the decade. This year, we're close to 21%, so that's progress, and it takes courage to criticize, but it also takes courage to recognize when progress has been made. But this is not enough. 21% is not nearly enough. How do we move forward? How do we move faster? We have a great panel to discuss that today. I want to welcome first Christian Lagarde, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and the former Finance Minister of France. Thank you so much for being here today. Also, the Vice President and Foreign Relations Minister of Panama. Thank you so much for being here, Isabel San Malo de Alvarado. Muchas gracias. Robert Moritz, the Global Chairman of Price Waterhouse Coopers International, and a champion of inclusion and diversity in the workplace. We had the chance to talk before our panel, and I'm excited that you'll share some of those ideas with our audience here today. Charmine Obaid-Shinoy, a documentary filmmaker, Times Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. I don't want to name all the awards you've received for your films, but they're most prestigious awards and consequential work in the documentary film Arena. And Sintia Castro from Costa Rica, the Vice President of RBA, Re-Inventing Business for All. We also had a conversation yesterday. I really enjoyed that, Sintia, and I'm looking forward to also sharing those ideas with our audience here today. Let's start with the first question. Very simple. How do we move forward? How do we move faster in achieving gender equality, gender parity in the world? You know, I have the privilege of being the oldest person on the panel. And I really welcome you, Thiem, which has to do with disrupting the way in which things are done and the way in which we try to close the gap and we try to break all the ceilings because we have been talking about it for as long as I can remember. And it is not happening at the speed where it should happen. And unless your child was inadvertently born about 80 years ago, which I doubt. The gap will not be closed when he or she is 83. The research conducted by the World Economic Forum shows that it will take 170 years at the way and at the speed it is going at the moment. And by that I mean that we have improved gradually a little bit over the last two decades. But in the last few years, that progress has slowed down. And whether you look at... So why is that? What do you think it has slowed down? Some of the factors. I personally think, and we are doing some research on that, I personally think that economic hardship is not conducive to tolerance. It's not conducive to making space. It's not conducive to encouraging the inclusion which is needed for women to participate at an equal level, everything being equal. So I think since 2008, we have seen a slow down of the process by which the gap is closed. I was particularly concerned, happy but concerned, when at the G20 under Australian presidency back two years ago, was made to try to close by 25% the gap between men and women. Now, 25% in so many years is just not enough to actually reduce this basic inequality that is not conducive to good inclusive economic growth that is not allowing the reduction of inequality which is not allowing the improvement of productivity and which is not allowing a better sharing of good services and movement of people around the world. I'm talking from an economic point of view because that's what we are doing at the moment and the research that we try to push which I think are critically important in order to move the needle decisively in the direction of equality. And I'm looking forward to hearing some of your personal experiences in disrupting gender roles which I'm sure you have. Happy to. Instead of following the normal order of the panel I'm going to go one on one so Cynthia doesn't feel isolated all the way at the end. Cynthia Castro, share some thoughts about how do we move forward faster and your personal experience in Costa Rica. Well, with re-bending business for all we work in a lot of rural communities and also in the city all over Costa Rica and I have some opportunities of working with women other places and with men and something that is interesting is that I normally start my workshops telling people imagine that power is a human being imagine that power is a person close your eyes and imagine how does power speak how does power dress and normally about 80% of the people will tell me well he's a man in a suit right so one thing we have to know is that we've grown in this culture that means we are all gender biased even though we've studied it a lot we've tried to work and get that bias out we are all gender biased because we we grew in this culture and it is unconscious the thing is that if we believe that power is a man what happens with girls that are growing up thinking that power is a man and for me it's amazing to be here I'm really thankful with the World Economic Forum for creating global shapers and for creating this opportunity me sitting next to Christine Lagarde it's like wow a dream coming true I feel the same way about it I feel the same way and I'm thankful because even though I believe I'm an empowered woman I never imagined and dreamed of this moment and the World Economic Forum did it for me so they had a different concept of power and until we don't change our concept of power we won't be able to change it for other people so we need a cultural revolution and that is there's different ways of doing that through education, through media making movies storytelling is so important because you can't aspire to be what you've never seen so one way to disrupt gender biases we need to change education it's not possible having teachers in schools, high schools colleges and having people working in media that have no idea about anything that has to do with gender that they don't know what they are teaching other people and how they are affecting people's lives we say that women are underrepresented here at Davos but Latin American women we have two on our panel even more underrepresented not only here at Davos but probably around the world any thoughts about that? well it's the same thing everywhere you look at figures globally you look at figures in the region you look at figures in my country and everywhere we have the same situation indicators can vary a little bit but if you look at Panama there's been advancement of course there's more representation in terms of economic, social and political positions but it's still a huge gap and in Panama for example for many years more women are graduating from university than men two out of three women that graduate from the national university two out of three that graduate from the university are women but when you look at the workforce they are represented 50% of the panamanian workforce is women and when you look at the workforce and forget about the boards you're just not there so something needs to be done definitely and I'm going to say something that I never thought I would say because I really dislike quotas in general because women should have the opportunity to be in positions not because of a quota but because they have the merits because there are enough women in this world that have the training, that have the experience that have the capacity and I think it's going to happen unless we have quotas and take that example you being here at Davos would this have happened if WEF had not decided to fund global shapers and define that 50% of global shapers would be women it would have happened so I'm starting to think maybe the only way of accelerating change has to do with quotas what's going to happen with boards when are we going to have you know boards and executive members of business take pride when they have one woman sitting at their board it's something to be proud of when you have two come on and not because it is right but because it is sound business to have women represented 50% of the population 50% of the consumers and I would pay more than 50% of the consumers are women so if you make decisions in terms of a company having the position, the vision you will make better decisions for your business but we don't understand it, we talk about it and we hear about it and we just continue to talk about it and to hear that the trend has slowed down it's heartbreaking and you know we cannot wait 80 years or 170 or 50 we really need to do something and I think culture is a big part but I'm not sure I think we need to do things on several fronts yes certainly Charameen, you've been telling the story of gender equality for a while now share your experiences with us and what are we missing from this discussion look women are excluded from decision making men sit around a table and decide for women until you have women sitting around a table and making decisions so if you look for example in Pakistan I'm going to tell you a story about women who have decided to take things in their own hands and make decisions for themselves in the valley of Swat there is an all women council now it's run by a woman called Tabasum she was a victim of child marriage herself for years women used to come to her with their sad stories and didn't know how to break out of the silence and so she got a group of women together and decided that we are going to make decisions for ourselves and now they dispense justice if they hear two sides of the story they say well you know what this is what your husband or this is what the men in the community have to do to make it right for you and since they started to do that the violence in the village where she is has started to go down so I think that not only citizens and women have to take that step but also governments in Pakistan for example the Punjab government which is a provincial government has made it mandatory that 30% of all their boards are going to have women now that is the first step so that means that you have to have women on the boards whether you like it or not and you have to get women they say that there aren't enough qualified women well you've got to give women the chance to sit on a board to experience that in order to get the experience of being qualified not every man who sits on a board is qualified either not making a point for not being qualified for those positions it has to be both the citizens have to take things in their own hands in some way women have to take things but also the government has to partner with you in some way and take initiatives last but not least Robert Moritz that was intentional by the way you are the only man on the panel I hope I'm qualified to be on the panel with diversity and the important of inclusion in the workforce knows that you're over qualified to be on this panel but we said some of Madame Lagarde said something before we started our panel who's in the audience and I see that it's mostly women a lot of people are following the conversation on Facebook Live sharing their comments most of them are also women is this a women's rights issue gender equality disrupting the status quo of gender roles depends on whether women do or don't do no it's an issue for everybody so let's go back what we're trying to do here is accelerate the trends and accelerate the history that we're trying to change going back to your yet to be newborn and the only way you do that is through disruptive leadership and that goes at the policy level it goes at the business level as well and I would love to be able to say similar yourself Madame Vice President that human behavior is well intended enough that they'll accelerate it on themselves but they're not going to do it it's not naturally going to happen so let's stick with the board conversation for a second we did a study recently we talked about the value of diversity in the board room and we asked the question of the female board members versus the male board members how many of you value diversity in the board room and it was polar opposite the males did not value the concept of diversity in the board room and if the males are dominating the board room they're actually going to get the selection of women into the board room there are plenty of women qualified to be in the board room the second thing is actually the women truly value that but they don't have enough of a voice and being at the table to help make those decisions that goes at the corporate level as well as it goes at government levels depending on where you are around the world so I'm with you I'm not sure I would love to be able to say that let's not go to quotas but you absolutely need programs to be a counter force a counter force to the natural human behavior well intended but it's not going to accelerate history at the level we're talking about right now and I do think back to your opening question this is why PWC we were one of these founding members for he for she which what Emma Watson talked about on the panel if the males are not in the conversation we've missed it because we're talking today the panelists today we're the converted already the people in the room are already advocates I gotta imagine there's probably not anybody in the room that needs to be convinced the story's already been told the question is how do you actually tell not the story but rather get to the actions that are needed and that's where I think programs are in place that have to actually make this come to life thank you thank you Robert and something that also came up before we got on stage was the fact that now that internet permeates everything this conversation also has to happen online right in parts of the world seventy percent seventy percent seventy five percent of women say they've been subject to some sort of cyber violence that very often introduces into physical violence it's not a safe positive place for women in places around the world how do we push gender equality also in our interactions online using technology maybe to further this purpose and I'll start with Cynthia well my experience is more in the business sector in general not just technology so what we're doing is even though certain public policies are not there yet in Costa Rica the ministry of women rights in Costa Rica created a gender parity certification so what we're doing is we are finding all the gender gaps in every organization and that can be corporation but that can also be any institution of the government so we check they have to show us actually their salaries like what are they paying everybody and we see if there's a gap there what are the gaps in maternity paternity leave what are their sexual harassment and what is the process they have against sexual harassment what is the capability that people on the decision making positions have about knowing about gender and knowing about biases how is the gender bias in the recruitment process are they leaving the names in the pictures of the candidates when they're hiring or are they taking that off just to avoid any type of bias because you can't be gender blind in 2017 you have to be gender smart companies need to be aware that biases exist that there will never be a company that has no gender gap and that and knowing that you cannot ignore your gaps you have to identify them you have to measure them on order for you to be able to make a plan to close those gaps and you have to measure and check how you're doing every year so this is what we're doing in Costa Rica every year there's a third party that comes in and checks how those gender gaps are advancing and the company receives a certification there's a lot of information on building the business case of why this makes a company more profitable but also I think the next point and what we really have to work on is educating consumers just as you check whether the product you're buying is environmental friendly you want to check if a company that you're buying their products are gender responsible and gender responsive because we've been talking about being responsive during this meeting so it's not enough and we've been talking for years now of what's our role and what is our responsibility but what are we really doing and just to add about the part of men I believe we still have a part missing because I think it's not only he for she I think it's he for all and it's he for he because gender inequality affects men also and a lot of the time men don't participate in this conversation because they think it's an issue about women and they're not aware that culture is also making them prisoners because they have to be the provider the protector they have to have this emotional shield and their consequences for men we become more depressed men suicide more so there's a lot of consequences also of how we are educating ourselves of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman in our culture and how do we speed up this process using technology Madame Lagarde maybe technology is a good tool right now to speed up the disruption of gender roles you know I'm not the ultimate expert on technology so I don't want to be out of my depth what I know I think dotically is that the use of technology in India for instance I don't know if we have anybody from India in the audience in rural areas of India for instance has been tremendous in order to help women resist domestic violence where it used to be the case the only you know support and help that they could get in case of domestic violence was to go to the mother-in-law well not much support was to be expected of course whereas having actually a cell phone that you can use and to reach out to your own parents and to friends and to people who will actually support you genuinely has actually been an improvement but this is very anecdotical and I don't want to draw from that what I can tell you from my personal experience is that having raised children and being a grandmother now I can see that my daughter-in-law is actually using technologies in a much smarter way than whatever I was using at the time to actually free up time make sure that she can mind her business and her professional activity while also checking on her husband to make sure that he's actually picking up the kids at school and doing the right things that he should be doing in order to support and take his share of the sort of parental work I'm not saying mother work or father work but parental work and that is quite efficient actually so that's just very personal the thing I would say is you started off the conversation around the negative on technology I think it's important to address that issue as well but it seems like the technology these days is getting more of a negative play than it is a positive play to Christine's point so when we think about technology there's an opportunity to actually think about how do you manage your collective life a little bit better with the opportunities that are there it allows for transparency around job opportunities if you look at the workforce and the academic studies in terms of how many people may not be full-time employees but part-time employees crowd sourcing jobs through technology and apps there's actually another positive that comes through the other element with technology though which actually provides you the data is where you see the discriminations and the unconscious or conscious biases that might be coming through so again just to give you another stat we went through a large study even though we do accounting consulting attacks we're more of a human capital machine we believe for pregnancy and maternity and the like and come back to the workforce statistically in the ratings when they're evaluated because they're at a sight out of mind they're actually reduced one or two levels in terms of their performance but they never did anything differently to justify the decrease in performance which tells you then the program perhaps that put in place is maybe take them out of or do an intervention to avoid that automatic deterioration and there's got to be an intervention to make that happen what an organization did you do with that research? you changed your policies in terms of how you did the evaluation the processes and you brought in unconscious bias before the evaluations were done to change the human mindset to make this come to life and that's what I mean by policies and procedures and the data is there for us now around the world in all kinds of countries in terms of the opportunities I'm obviously speaking from more of a corporate perspective a private sector perspective but that's where we've got to use this more pinpointedly and on top of that you can get to the individuals now that perhaps are sending those wrong messages by the data from the information structure on structure to actually then have an intervention with them one-on-one so using data wisely as a... absolutely and that goes back to the intervention and the disruptive leadership that's needed to make this happen yeah going back to your experience in storytelling is there a common denominator in the stories that you've been following of course gender equality a major theme but in the lives of these women in the lives of these girls that you could see there's an opportunity to make this small but very impactful change and that would speed up things look the world is completely changing now you can't hold back women it's just not possible because the cell phone has made it impossible to do so especially countries like Pakistan where the penetration of cell phone is 125 million subscribers about 30% of those are now using Chinese phones that have access to data for an average woman who probably didn't know about her rights or didn't know is now has access to that women are starting their own businesses sitting from their own homes using social media they're forming networks online whether it is about domestic violence or whether it's about rape there is a camaraderie that technology is allowing women to come around and I think that the biggest problem is going to be that the old guard in many countries the men who hold power are going to resist and that is why in many countries you're seeing there's a surge in violence against women and it's simply because women are now saying enough is enough and we want to move forward and this is our right and we know how to do so and when a woman says that it makes a lot of men afraid all that they know is about to collapse and that's why I think now more than ever we are going to see faster the changes in women what they ask for and what they get because they are no longer going to say it is okay for you to say no because they are ready to say yes do you perceive this fear this fear of change in Panama for example when you started your vice presidency did you get that resistance from men in Panama or women? I think hope that spaces would be open but I want to mention the opportunities that technology offers going back to what has been said and I think technology is a great powerful tool to model things and technology might not be helping us because it's also a way of portraying the role model of power as we know it and the role model of women which is used violently sometimes I think we need to concentrate on using technology as a way of carrying information and thinking about Panama I'm thinking for example of what our culture represents in terms of sexual and reproductive rights our culture is one that limits and hinders women from having family planning information and so the result is that many teenage girls are getting pregnant and this has been happening forever it just continues to happen and in countries like mine we still have people arguing against information for women to plan their lives and be responsible about it how about using technology for example and I think that's an area where filmmaking can happen where media has a powerful opportunity and where we all need to be more conscious and maybe there also some sort of policies to arrange things differently what do you mean by that buying online for example but so you're using technology to in a way change cultural heritage and how that limits gender equality family planning information and on unwanted pregnancy basic things that to us is information that's available and you wouldn't think that for some women it's just not but for many women it's not particularly poor women in rural areas in indigenous areas and everybody has a cell phone nowadays everybody has a cell phone but this information that for many of us has been taken for granted for poor girls and for poor women is unknown and it just perpetuates poverty and this circle in which they are growing up I'm going to encourage our audience if they have a question we will get to your questions we'll have some time at the end for that also online a lot of people are asking us about how do you in your personal lives with the women that are part of your life of your workplace how do you empower them to preach with the example of what we're saying in this panel that's a question from our Facebook live audience Madame Lagarde, I'll start with you again at the IMF for example well at the IMF we have quotas and we have very very granular quotas because to say that you want to reach parity is not sufficient you have to sort of go into each and every grade each and every categories and not only witness in the lowest part in terms of hierarchy but make sure that it continues throughout equally you need to see that it's not just the young women who are having access but they continue to have access going forward post-pregnancy and young children's time which is typically the place where you have the massive dropout so we do have quotas we do we've reached our objectives not in all categories I have to say and it's particularly hard it's all very well proclaiming that quotas are needed but actually delivering on the quotas that are defined in a very strict way is difficult and we have categories where given the size of our organization it's demographics and it's lack of growth in the next five years in order to reach the quota we should hire women only which is fine but you have to deal with the other side where some talented young man or talented not so young man say well what about me I'm doing my best and I'm trying to progress and I'm checking all the books and providing all the hard work that you expect me to provide and yet I will not be given a chance so it's not always an easy task and one where sometimes you have to mitigate compromise find ways in which you respond to the legitimate needs of those who have been excluded for many many years without creating new exclusions that are going to harm going forward because at the end of the day you want men and women to participate and contribute to the well-being of organizations, of corporates and of nations including at political levels I'm feeling of a comment that was said Can I just say one more thing you are in a position of power and I'm sure that there are many women in the room who are in that position of power I think it's our responsibility to try to help others progress along the way and we don't always do that let's face it so we have to identify the own biases that we carry with ourselves and we have to gently when you sit, when you share a board as many of you I'm sure do sometimes you have to identify who happens to be a woman luckily takes the floor guess what many of the male board members will start withdrawing physically observe the body language it's obvious or they start looking at the thing or they start sort of saying when you're the chair you say hey somebody is talking you should be listening don't look at your papers it's for everybody so we need to to disrupt the normal way in which yeah don't do that also the expectation of success seems to be different for men and women successful man probably just is someone that achieves a good position at work or makes a lot of money and that somehow seems enough but when a woman is in that position then questions arise about is she a good wife is she a good mother how to leave those responsibilities or negotiate those responsibilities to gain this I'm going to go to Cynthia and then back to you Madam Vice President and then we'll start again with Charmine and Bob sorry about that Cynthia. Yeah so Christine was mentioning about how we have to have equal opportunities in politics economy in the business but I believe we have to have equal opportunities also in the household and the major responsibility of everything done at home and taking care of children and parents when they grow old is still in the hands of women in Costa Rica we had a study of how much time women were investing in household activities it was about 37 hours a week versus men 15 hours a week so it's twice so until we change those those ideas about success we won't have an opportunity to divide 50-50% those responsibilities at home because success for a woman has to do with maternity has to do with family with getting married and for a man with business with money and so if he's a good father people won't see him as successful and that's why I believe that part of this conversation what's really important is paternity leave also right now I'm 31 years old I was speaking in the other day to several friends because they asked me to do an article on why are we getting married after 30 and we were all speaking we were like well because we feel like we have to choose like we have to choose between our career and having a family because right now even though if I find a partner that wants to do 50% of the work at home he doesn't have the support by law to take time off and take care of his responsibility so it all would follow me so it is important to change that idea of success for men also Bob how do you empower the women in your life so two stories you said make it personal when I came into my previous role which is a business leader I brought a number of women into the leadership team and to Christine's point but a little counter in the very first meeting you saw the male talking and the number of women in the room were not speaking up so little I got up to get a cup of coffee and I walked behind one of them in particular I said you're in the room for the reason I asked you to be in this room I know you can speak up you've got points of view and you've got points to go speak and this is the challenge I think for again I'll go back to the opening theme I gave which is the men in the organization are they creating the opportunities and are they giving the confidence to the women to actually go do the things that they need to do and I think it's important for us that's what I meant by disruptive let's talk about another disruptive example a number of years later I thought about changing a leader in the middle management of our organization some gender into the conversation you have to have an equal number of male and women but the men were justifying why this particular woman is not qualified so I happen to know this woman but they don't know I know this woman so we went through this debate of which they said well she's not familiar with the business they said well do you know that she actually taught me the business because actually she was in the business a number of years ago we said since transfer to her to give her more opportunity then they went down a lot of thinking well hold on she had a personal issue to deal with we're not sure she's going to have the time to do it and they just assumed I said hold on has anybody talked to her and I'm myself willing to pick up the phone and talk to her and the point I'm making here is that unless leaders visibly and proactively do the disruption to change the mindset the next time that team comes in they'll know to behave a little differently if I did that behind the scenes I bet you still wouldn't happen and wouldn't have gotten the storytelling in the organization to create opportunity and to give women the confidence to be successful and to do the things they need to do Shahmeen Women even if they're very very successful and at the top of the thing very often the question that they get asked is how do you juggle family life and work I mean how many men get asked how many male CEO get asked how do you juggle being a CEO and having a family I mean is this bias that we all have and it's everywhere it has to change but it has to change not because of the way society looks at us but I think that each one of us has to change I refuse to answer that question when people ask me I do not answer it and I no longer answer the question what does it feel like to be a female filmmaker I am a filmmaker what's a female filmmaker and a very good one so you know those are things but I think that there are certain things that force women completely out of the workforce so you might be very educated but in many of the societies we live in sexual harassment at the workplace is a very major issue and there might be laws that exist for it but how many women have the courage to report it and forward it and fight the system and I think that those are very real issues so maternity leave is one issue because it takes you out of the workforce sometimes at a critical time in your life sexual harassment and many young women that I speak to say that it has really changed the way they'd rather not go to work than have to deal with that constantly and some people might not even acknowledge it to be sexual harassment but it very much is sexual harassment Madam Vice President I also wanted to ask about how does it like to be a female no of course I am not going to do that no no let's start politics for a second something less controversial like the election of the first African American president didn't change racial tensions in the US the possibility of having the first woman being elected as a president in the US wasn't going to change gender equality issues but my question is having a man like the president like Donald Trump who has expressed the way he has about women because of gender equality not only the US why would I get this question I'm foreign minister maybe that's why I think that messages are important messages are powerful and messages from powerful people are very powerful so we need to pay attention and we need to continue to work on messages being gender correct I think that's part of the what we have ahead and I think as leaders from the private sector or from the public sector we have a responsibility we have a responsibility to to lead and we have a challenge here on gender participation equality and we need to take note of that and work towards the solution and there are many ways from a position of power where you can work at that be that your immediate group of people and you mention what we each of us do I have noticed that from my support staff for example it's a lot easier for my male support staff to sit at the table and my female support staff might tend to sit behind and I take that from Cheryl Sandberg's book I make a point of inviting them to sit at the table I think each of us has the opportunity of taking that mentoring be that we are men or women and maybe not necessarily a powerful position but if we take care of people around us and just give them that little push and it has to be constant and I want to share a personal note and my daughter is probably going to kill me but anyhow and I want to share it because I think as women we have a huge responsibility on the culture that we continue to portray and continue to not consciously I've always been a professional but I've always taken care of my family and done the role that we are expected to do and my husband has always been very present as a husband, as a father but I've always managed what was expected from me to manage when I took office my life was a little bit disrupted and my daughter needed to go to the doctor and we were sitting around the dining table and I told her the appointment is made you are going tomorrow at 3 o'clock and daddy is taking you and she asked but will he know what to say to the doctor and my husband was sitting right there and he goes I'm sitting right here you cannot speak as if I wasn't and why does that happen because I never let him before it's part of what my trained and we need to work at that many times men don't take on some roles because we don't let them okay you wanted to add something I just wanted to add as part of the tips and the things that we can do to help when I was finance minister very often president of companies would come on board on their strategy and I would ask them about the board composition because it was in the air that women should be part of the boards and they would always say you know I would love to have a woman on the board I just can't find any and the only ones that I know of are already completely overbooked so I used to have a little piece of paper in my pocket with the list of the 20 names of those women whom I knew were fully competent and willing to serve on boards because that is just okay all right if the minister says so you just have to do it one more point and that goes to your issue about sexual harassment we together with the World Bank we conducted a study of about discrimination against women in the legal systems of the entire membership so you're talking about nearly 180 countries and we were really surprised to see that over 90% 90% of all countries in the world still have in their legal system whether by virtue of their constitution or in the legal system itself restrictions, discrimination ways in which women are prevented from exercising the same rights as men having access to the profession and having the right to inherit from their parents and so on and so forth and it's mind-boggling that 90% of those countries still have it now some people will say it doesn't make any difference it's okay we ignore, no it does have an effect and we have seen the case of countries Peru being one Somalia being another one and a few others were actually changing the legal system as had an impact on using the gender gap on facilitating access for women to the economy so starting with just the legal basis more homework needs to be done and presto subito I agree let's open the floor to questions we'll start over here we have microphones if you can just say your name and a brief question the shorter they are the more than we can address thank you so much I'm the IT and telecom minister from Pakistan and I just want to make a remark here Shamene mentioned about the package that was given in Punjab in Pakistan where we enhanced the board representation I was the woman behind the package and Shamene knows that and I was one woman in that entire room who was advocating for that 36-point package that we finally concluded and I wanted to make it 50% and the chief minister said to me I'll put your dreams on the table if you want and I was one woman who was a lawyer and I would be combated by all the men saying but you can't do this but this is not possible but we have to find the 50% women or they're not there anymore so I would say okay let's start with 30 and I tell you we found the 30 without any problem in my country on the birds so I'm going to do 50% now I made a proposal for the prime minister and I have not found the same resistance today because I feel that if there is one woman in that room who can advocate for the rights of the women she weighs more than all of them sitting there and we have to do it collectively when we are in the position when we are in power to make sure that we do more for our own gender ourselves I started an ICT for girls program I'm training about 15,000 girls in coding and cloud computing the poorest of the girls in the far flung areas and those for me are the most empowered girls and this is just a policy tweaking so this policy tweaking at the right level makes a difference and rather than sulking and sitting and waiting for somebody to come and give us the rights that we think that we have we have to go on and get them but all others, whoever we can wherever they are through the policy interventions that we today, most of us are in a position to do and I tell you, my country is changing and the world is changing and what Mr Moritz has just pointed out these are precisely the reasons I feel why the women are not coming forward I tell you, if we didn't have to bear the children and if we didn't have to look after the families there would be no man sitting in any board position or any chief executive of any company because we would not give them the space because no, because from my universities and colleges in Pakistan 70% of girls are becoming doctors 70% the chief minister said to me that how about, we were discussing that and he shared that why aren't they working I said give them the environment the conducive environment so we made the daycare centers so we are working on the conducive environment a workplace where they could work but essentially what I'm saying is I'm not going to sulk, I've never sulked and I'm the one who believe that I am the one who's going to do it and so if I can do it, we all can do it thank you for sharing and it will be a good problem to have next year at Davos to incorporate men that are underrepresented in business industries or in government let's have one from each segment of the audience so over there to the right thank you very much for this very interesting panel from EU Trade Commissioner disrupting the status quo of gender roles is the right thing to do, we're all convinced but there are some who are not convinced but they might be convinced by the economic arguments because it is good money in gender equality and there's a lot of research in that women in boards that fathers who take parental leave are better leaders there's a lot of research how do we get out that economic argument how can the word economic forum and the platform you just created spread that economic to convince those who are not convinced in hearts but who might be convinced by the economic arguments because gender balance makes a lot of economic sense it has to be demonstrated in real life real time it's something that is actually happening when you look at the growth at productivity, at reduction of inequality and you start measuring that's at country level it is happening it needs to go faster, it needs to be pushed but it is happening at board level you have many studies as well but you know leaders in the corporate world have to take ownership of that and realize that they're going to get more bang for their box if they have women sitting at the table and the WEF has a program initiative around the workforce work as well as gender and we actually just met this morning as one of the stewards and we talked about how can we get some of the academic studies even more out there and then it goes back to then what are we doing to hold the governance bodies accountable to push forward the issues at a corporate level or at a government level in terms of the accountability amount and bring this to life and of course we get better performance why don't we have better board burn performance now the question is going to be obviously with the boards being all male and as I said before they don't value that diversity they're going counterintuitive to the education the academic studies that are there so there is an effort underway to even do more than that we actually said we dedicate more time and research that this coming year I would like to add to that because I have to go a lot of the time to convince board members to do gender parity to bring a lot of business cases to them and I'm guessing if you are here it's because you believe in gender parity and many of you are leaders of corporations that are doing programs so sharing your information of how it's going and how it's succeeding is very important how a marketing in a different way towards women how having more women in the business decision table is affecting your numbers and sharing your numbers is really important to influence other business decision makers to follow also from a content standpoint I think we talked about this initiative it's called fusion fights concentrating on social justice issues like gender equality I would think the best example of how that can move the needle is Charmine right here her stories have created awareness around the world on the importance and value of gender equality so we're aspiring to do maybe not as great stories as she does but something compelling enough to also move the needle in our communities especially among young people who are the key component of our audience over here one man so I'm not blamed of not being for gender equality Hello my name is Ayman can you hear me? Yes I'm from Saudi Arabia and one boy and I cannot agree more with you on gender equality and speeding up this I think male one of the most important is engaging males more in this mission although some resistance come from females mothers teach their daughters in my country sometimes to maintain this inequality unfortunately I can give you thousands of examples but the main resistance comes from the males so if you don't engage the males we're not going to go anywhere and I look at the panel and I sat on a similar panel two years ago and there was only you this needs to change also I have put quotas in my company I insisted because when they started allowing us the regulations to hire Saudis you have to understand that we're lagging behind the rest of the world women still don't drive but we have issued a vision for 2030 where we have clearly stated that women participation in the workforce is key and women equality is not even a question now getting there is the main challenge and again I repeat we need to engage our male ambassadors here those who have daughters and those who care about their mothers, sisters and daughters and wives and want to make a difference and you can do it at government level and private level when I didn't have quotas we hired up to 300 women sorry our quota is still so low 7% of our workforce and our ambition is to reach 20 and I know that's very low under your but we're coming from a different starting point but I had to put quotas because when they hired they give how do you call it scholarships we lost most of our talented ladies and so they were filled by Saudis Saudi men not women and so I had to put quotas to get that I'm also a member of the joint commission and employment council and one of the top agendas it's composed of a board which reports to the ministry of economy and planning and his main mission is to create jobs we are today 14% unemployed we need to create 3 million jobs in Saudi Arabia and one of the top agenda is female participation in the workforce so again we need to engage our men especially in Saudi Arabia we really very quickly part of the problem of getting men engaged is that most men think they understand gender equality that their gender IQ is highly developed and then you start reading I think it was my case even taking a few tests the HeForShe initiative does a great job on that and then you realize that you're not that well prepared or well documented on what gender equality means yeah so the thing Enrique is talking about is we actually did two things for HeForShe we actually put out a gender awareness IQ test for organizations to take a look at and then we actually did something that we put out to the public so not only can the public but also people individually and then corporations and organizations sort of test themselves in terms of how good your IQ is around this and what in fact you are doing compared to peers and compared to best practices and we put it out there for free to try to get the awareness up again in terms of the issues so there's economic awareness and so the business benefit which Christine talked about there's the unconscious bias and the preferences that come through and the human behavioral aspects of it and then there's the programs and the best practices that actually have to be put in place and then there's the individual behavior as the human aspect that's got to bring this all to life in many parts of the world the Middle East, South Asia and you know it's this concept that we have what are the neighbors going to say what is the community going to say girls go out and work if our girls stay out after dark you know there's a lot of societal pressure on the men at home and I think that as you've been saying that we need to get men involved in the conversation there's a wonderful example that I love to give of a woman in Karachi who set up a school for girls and she went door to door speaking to the men and asking them why they don't let the women come to school and predominantly all the men said we worry about what people are going to say if our girls go to school and so what people are going to say is what we have to change and she had to rationalize it and work step by step by step and then she invited the men to come to the school once a month to see what the girls were doing and it took a long time but about three or four years later they wanted to send their girls to school so it's going to be a painfully long process in many parts of the world but this mentality that exists has to be shattered they're asking me to wrap things up and just quickly this is the second time that I've shared this quote during this week because we are celebrating Martin Luther King this week in the United States and my favorite quote from Martin Luther King is the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice but we need more women helping it bend towards justice now more than ever and I hope that in the future we... more male too more mothers I agree and I hope that in the future we can have a conversation not around how we disrupt gender roles but how we fully gain from a more equal gender equal world thank you so much to all of our panelists for being here and to our audience