Friday, January 29, 2010

"Gender Issues Must Move to the Heart of Davos Agenda" Plus Lack of Senior Women on Wall Street

The world's power brokers are gathering in DAVOS this week for the World's Economic Forum. One day, ONE DAY, women and girls will be front and center on the agenda and almost everything they will be discussing will have some sort of gender lens. Why? Because narrowing the gender gap is key to global economic growth. The Forum has recognized the importance of narrowing the gender gap as key to economic growth yet they have yet to mainstream the learnings. They have for the past few years published a report which you can find here. The US ranks 31st - yes 31st, behind countries like Mongolio and Latvia. This is truly outrageous and a FACT that mainstream media really needs to pick up on. No wonder we are in the middle of a financial and economic crisis! Ask me, go ahead, "Do I think if women were more present in positions of influence in critical mass we might have avoided this dramatic downturn. Yes I do!" I have pages and pages and pages of research to back up this 'opinion' which i will soon hope to publish for you all to see. Pages.

I friend and collegue Roxanne Mankin Cason wrote this piece for Women's Enews about the need to have gender issues front and center.

Here is another piece worth reading from the NY Times on the lack of women in positions of power on Wall Street. A question they asked is 'why don't women resurface when they leave?' but the bigger question is why are there so few women who make it in to top positions? We wrote a paper on that exact topic that I have blogged on many times, but if you have not yet taken a look here it is again. ( Women in Fund Management: A Roadmap to Critical Mass and Why It Matters.)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Jacki,

McKinsey Quarterly just put out a paper--"How Helping Women Helps Busines." Thought you'd find it interesting.

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Economic_Studies/Productivity_Performance/How_helping_women_helps_business_2513

Jacki Zehner said...

Thank you Pam!