 Welcome everyone. This is a session about the world in numbers focusing on gender parity. Achieving parity, gender parity, is not just the fair thing to do, it's just not the moral thing to do. It's also the right thing to do as a catalyst for global growth, as a catalyst for resolving our major challenges to the global political and economic order. This session is going to focus on the outlook for global gender parity and it's going to invite us to imagine to come up with recommendations to get us to a parity measure of 50-50. Whether we're talking about political representation or economic representation, the goal we'd like to set here is getting to parity-parity by 50-50 by 2030. I am going to be talking about the economic dimension. I am joined by an outstanding scholar and leader who's going to talk about the political dimension, and that is Ms. Arancia Gonzalez, who is the Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sience Pole, a very prestigious institution, a very important position. Let me just say a little bit about the state of gender parity right now. I started working on this at the World Economic Forum 17 years ago. I worked with Sadia Zahidi, who many of you know, to launch the Gender Parity Report. It is one of the most influential and widely cited reports of the World Economic Forum to this day. And I invite all of you, if you haven't read the latest version, 2023, please do read it. What that report does is it monitors using data, very objective, carefully collected, cross-national data that's comparable. It uses data to measure gender gaps in four areas, in education, in health, in economic opportunity and in advancement, and in political representation, those four. And it looks at that not just globally, but then there's breakdowns by region, there's breakdown by country. You can check your country and see how are we doing on parity or lack of parity on economic opportunity, how are we doing on health. So we have broken down by country and by region, and then we also have frequently deep dives in breakdowns by sector. So you can actually see how is an industry doing in terms of parity. I want to start with the fact that in terms of parity, really during the past 17 years, the gaps have been smallest in education and health. Now, I want to emphasize here, a gap is a gender gap. A poor country may be delivering less in education to both men and women, but they may have a high degree of parity because the representation is equal for men and women in the educational sector. The same thing true with the healthcare sector. We were very careful from the beginning to say that economic development should not necessarily be correlated with parity. Some developing countries have achieved parity, some are far from parity. So that's the first thing. The second thing is we found consistently is that the biggest gaps are in economic opportunity and even bigger in political representation, in political representation. So that when you look over all at the gaps and you add them all up and you weight them appropriately, we do weight them and things like that, you see that the world has essentially an estimate of 130 or so years to get to global parity across the board. Well, that's much too long, and we don't want to do that. We don't want to do that. Today we're here to discuss, okay, how can we really accelerate this to get closer to that goal of parity, 50-50? And since the gaps are biggest in economics and politics, that's what we're going to talk about today, okay? Because that's really, if you're going to make more progress here, that's where you have to focus your effort. So let's talk a little bit about the economy. One way to measure this is labor force participation rates. So if you see what happened during COVID, and I want to say this is an ongoing issue, is COVID led a lot of women to leave the workforce. They had to leave the workforce because care remains disproportionately the responsibility of women in all societies, developed societies, rich societies, poor societies, developing societies. So when care shoots to the top with COVID, you are going to see women dropping out of the labor force, and they do. And by the way, they pay a penalty for that. They pay a penalty for that because we know very well that if you spend some time out of the labor force, when you go back into it, you don't catch up to where you were before. You do not. You do not. So that care penalty is a very important penalty, which we saw in the period of COVID. So that's one thing I want to emphasize here. The second thing I want to emphasize here is, again, related to care. When you think about sectors of the economy where their high labor force participation rates of women, they are in places like education and health. Those are sectors which actually lag pretty badly in terms of pay. So basically you have women equally represented in these kinds of professions, but they're the low paying professions. Some economists say these are just the feminization of wages where you have a large share of women in a sector. The wages are depressed by that. Well, we should be able to do something about that. That is something to do about that. An area which we focused on in terms of thinking about the future is not just the care economy, but the whole science, technology, engineering, and math, the whole tech jobs. Because if you look across societies, developed and developing, the high wage, high productivity, high advancement, high leadership sectors are in these technology driven sectors. They're in these sectors. Women are still not, even in those worlds where you have high degrees of educational parity, women are still not training enough in STEM. They're not taking the degrees that they need to take in order to enter those fields. And then, of course, once they enter those fields, you have all sorts of issues of advancement and promotion and whether as a woman you're recognized for your leadership capabilities. So those are some, I think, outstanding facts that I think come from the report. We can discuss many others, but let me stop with that on the economic side and turn over to my colleague, Arancia, to talk about some of the political gaps. And then we can talk about what to do about them. Arancia. Thank you very much, Laura, for this very clear landscape on the economic part of this conversation, which is how do we get to parity? And let me now focus on representation. And I think it's very important that we look at representation because at the end of the day, representation is the translation of our aspirations into realities on the ground. If it's all about lofty aspirations and we do not see change on the ground, we will not see representation. What the last global gender gap report of the World Economic Forum tells us is a story of women being grossly underrepresented across. Let me unpack this with four different dimensions of this representation. First dimension. Women are very differently represented depending on the industrial or services sectors in our economy. As we just heard, women are very present, very prevalent, more present than men, overrepresented, we could say, in sectors like education or healthcare. But they are grossly underrepresented in sectors of the economy that are the sectors that are extremely competitive and that pay better wages. Oil, gas, mining, construction. Financial services. Financial services and technology, where the representation of women is particularly low. Second dimension of this conversation about representation is representation at the senior levels in the companies or at the senior levels in government or at the senior levels in administrations. And there, again, what we see in this report is that we are moving backwards. That in 2023 women are less present in all seniority levels across the board. And this means basically that women are dropping from the top. And dropping from the top, meaning that they will not be seated at the places where decisions are being made on allocation of resources, on setting of priorities, where the real decisions will be made. So we do have a problem with women at the top. Third dimension of representation. We are seeing in this report 2023 less women being selected for top jobs. So not just moving up the funnel, but those that where we have the capacity to decide we are not seeing women get to those leadership positions. Fourth and final, and I think this is where the rubber hits the road, is the representation of women in politics. So whether it's national politics, whether it's parliaments, but whether it's local politics, local representatives, where you would think that the incredible amount of women activists on the ground would make it to political representation, the reality is that they are not. Only around 35% of local representatives around the world are women, 35%. This is simply not acceptable. So we do have a problem. And I think the answer has to be to double down on our efforts to get better representation for women. So what is the recipe that I would like to propose to you today and that I hope we can discuss in our conversation. First, we have to make gender representation a target. We have to make sure that we put targets, businesses do, governments do, parliaments do, administrations do. They fix objectives because this is a way to walk towards that objective. Number two, we need to make it an issue. We need to make sure that the representation of women at all levels is being reported, is being debated, is being discussed, included in the media. We need to make this an issue. Third, we need to make it possible. Single women in politics. We need to make sure that there is financing for the campaigns of women in politics. We need better policies on work-life balance. We need better doses of mentoring. Women helping other women and we know from our own experience Laura that I guess we have a way to go there too. Or men helping other women get into politics. Finally, we need to make it happen and we need to celebrate the successes of these women that would have made it and would represent this 50% of the world that is women. So, these are a few suggestions on the representation side and obviously what we need now is obviously invite you for a dialogue, talk, ask, question, agree or disagree because this is the name of the game. Floor over to you to just simply need to raise your finger and tell us what you are and what you want to discuss. Yes, please. Yes, go ahead and please introduce yourself too. Start to measure parity. It's a workforce analytics platform. Okay. But in 2016 I read my very first World Economic Forum report and I was shocked as an executive in business that it was so bad. I think I'm going to misquote this. It was like 160 years or something. And I said I am going to, from that point on, dedicate my life to this. So I started parity.org and got 600 corporations, Fortune 100, 500 all over the world. I ring the opening bell at Nasdaq every year for International Women's Day and this really changed the direction of my life. But today I have a company called Perida where I think one of the key ways to fix this is to have every company really have good analytics about their workforce. And if they can set goals and objectives, they're going to improve even more. So that's my next thing. So I was wondering how you felt about the idea of measurement being a top way, one of the ways to get this to change. So I personally feel, you know, really going back to the launch of the gender parity report, sort of it's important to measure what you want to do. And that it's important to measure progress against it. It's important to set targets and to be clear about those targets. I mean, so we have had targets of parity and we have defined them very carefully and we measure them very carefully. And I do think it's essential to do that. I think that there's been a lot of discussion about whether or not, for example, within companies. Managers should be rewarded or compensated on achieving parity that there should be certain parity measures of performance for managers. So they're constantly looking at a target and how am I doing? And how am I mentoring enough? Am I training enough? Am I promoting enough? Am I giving enough project opportunities to a diverse workforce? A platform can help you measure all of those things. Since this whole Davos is so very much focused on AI, how can AI become a driver of even better data analytics and data projections, predictions, so we can change behavior? So to me it's very clear that we have to make gender parity and representation. We have to make it a target because when you make it a target, you do two things. First you signal there is a problem and we've got to make sure that we all understand this is a problem. Those are not nice to have. It's basically an economy that is underperforming a democracy that is not delivering for all its members. But the second dimension of making it a target is that you show a commitment to resolve it. So this too, this is what we have to play with. Understand that, make it clear that there is a problem but show there is a commitment. I am very hopeful because I've seen this in so many businesses across the world that they do understand that they are depriving themselves of incredible resources, including at the top of the company when they are not letting women rise. So making it a target is a way to get there. So kudos to you. Yeah kudos to you. Excellent. Other questions? Yes. What do we tell to... We have a hard time hearing you given the logistics. First I want to introduce yourself. My name is Thelsa and Aranta Gonzales knows me very well. I admire her for what she's done precisely in terms of gender parity. The thing is that we can't let things happen by themselves because it takes far too long. And anyway women are not, we don't start from a level playing field. We have women in general, they have family responsibilities still. They are not divided equally. They are this, you know, the glass ceiling apart from perception etc. But the question is when you try to push it, you didn't mention the word quotas at all. You spoke about objectives. There are many women that are against quotas for instance. We talk about equal representation. Definitely we don't have women positioned. Then it makes it even more difficult to even have this issue, to talk about the issue. It is important to have women, but not all women are on the same page in terms of parity. And they feel, particularly those that have made it, sometimes they feel that their merit is questioned. And they have been given the position just because they are women. And very recently I read a poll very recently that also what happens is that there is a perception by men, a perception which would very well be discussed with figures that they feel that over 40% of men feel that they are now being, that they are at disadvantage when it comes to appointments. And 30-odd women were also in agreement. And I believe that disadvantage means an unfair choice. So what can one tell to those people? So the first thing I would say to the skeptics or to those that are pushing back, I think we have to be very clear. The figures show that it's regression on women's representation across the board. In top leadership, in business. In top leadership in government. In top leadership in administration. In simply participation in certain economic sectors, especially the most lucrative. So no, we are not making this world more equal. We are moving in the direction of making it more unequal. So we've got a problem. Second thing I would say, I'm rather pragmatic. And I would not exclude any measure that gets us to parity. So I like a lot, you know, then shopping. Doesn't matter the color of the cat provided it catches the mouse. So frankly, I don't care if it is through encouragement. It is through targets. If it is through quotas, I know that we need to get there. So any means that we can deploy to get there, but good means. Now, let me end by saying we should not make this an issue of women against men or men against women. Because this is not how we will be able to advance. We've got to be very clear that it's men and women advancing together, that it's not a zero sum game, that we will be making the business more profitable, that we will make the administration more solid, that we will make the government more responsive. It's an endeavor of men and women working together, but with better parity. So I am going to say something a little different from that. Maybe it's generational. I, in my own life, I think very much benefited from what I would call affirmative search. So organizations, academic institutions, and then companies, I thought many boards, what they decided at a certain point is they were going to search different pools of talent to try to find more diverse candidates. So the first thing they did was to search different pools. The second thing they did, and this is very true in companies, appointments of boards, things like that, is they decided to be very, very specific about what kind of skills they were looking for. So I want to find, my board appointments were oftentimes, I want an economist who understands finance. That was a very specific thing, and that was the board description, and then they looked broadly to see, well, are there any diverse candidates out there that fit that criteria. But the criterion was set that way. It was not set as a diversity criterion. The issue for women, and I think it's a serious issue, is if you are hired in a situation where there is a quota, I am sorry. You are going to feel like you were hired by the quota, and all of your colleagues who are not in that quota are going to feel like that too. So you go into that with a strike against you. I don't really think you should have this job except you got it through a quota. So quotas are very dangerous, it seems to me, to the individuals, because the individuals are trying to show that relative to what the job needs, they have the talent to do it. They have the skills to do it. There's just no question. They just weren't found before because nobody was looking for them before. So that's my concern. My concern about quotas is the talent an individual, a diverse individual brings. Then the issue of men versus women. I agree. We're thinking about this as positive sum. In the economy, all of the benefits to a society that come from reducing gender gaps. We know that. We have all of the evidence, the growth rate evidence, the productivity evidence. We have it all, okay? That doesn't mean that within a company, within an organization, it's not always positive sum. Okay, there's one position for advancement. There's one position for advancement. And if you advance a diverse candidate, the non-diverse, and you say, what I'm doing is I'm advancing a non-diverse candidate. Yeah, the non-diverse candidate is going to feel discriminated against. That's just reality. It's just reality. I've had this conversation with my son. He's 40 years old, and I started to say, how do you feel about this in your life? He said, well, Mom, I grew up as a privileged white male, and therefore I understand if a company wants to choose a non-privileged white male over me. I understand it, but I also understand that that's what's happening. I am not being chosen because of my background in order to achieve someone not from my background. We're both equally talented. That seems to me to be the reality in some situations. Now, I would say that doesn't get at the issue these very sobering statistics. Why? Why have women not advanced on the corporate ladder sufficiently? Okay, I know one thing. I know only one thing on this. And that is that we talked about this yesterday. Many, many, many women. You start out in parity. You start out in the financial service sector or in the STEM sector or in any high-paying sector. Male and female are hired at the same rate. They're hired at the same salary. They're hired at the same position. Four or five years later, it's already showing up disparities. What is going on? A major thing that is going on is family choice. A major thing that is going on is the childhood penalty for women and the male bonus for men. Women in their 30s, they got the job. They got the education. They got the parity index in terms of entry. And around their mid-30s, it's like, oh, dear, I have to balance my work life. My family is requiring that. My company is requiring that. I'm afraid I'm going to have to step back. I said the evidence, sadly, is when you come back three or four years later, you don't get back. It's really, really hard to get back. I want to add all that to the discussion. Fair enough. Look, I just like you. When I started my career, I just thought that you make it to the top because you're good. You're good. If you're good, you make it to the top. Until you discover that it doesn't work like this. Getting to the top is a hard job. What we need to do is remove the barriers that have to do with biases against the participation of women in those positions, too. Well, this was an incredibly rich conversation. We know we have a lot to do. I guess our collective job, men and women, society, businesses, governments, administrations, NGOs, academics, everyone, our job is to double down on gender equality, double down. And this is where I think we would all need to support the global sprint to gender parity that the World Economic Forum has launched with very practical measures that businesses, that academics, that governments, that any actor can take to get us to a society that is represented also in all its dimensions for the diversity that our society has. Thank you. Let's hear a little cheer for ending this for the World Economic Forum. They've done a tremendous, this report, countries use it, companies use it, leaders use it, people measure themselves against it. The forum sets up accelerators and workshops and training to get progress. And even in the forum itself, there has been progress. Seventeen years ago, when we started this here, there were very, very, very few women attending the forum. And it was the pressure of this kind of thinking that led to companies to bring their top leadership, including some top female leaders. So, hooray to the forum. It's a great report. Thank you all for having us with you today. Thank you.