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Meta-manager Angie Gifford has also been mistaken for secretary instead of boss.
Sarah FrattaroliDeputy Head of Economics
Angie Gifford (57) is one of the most influential managers in Europe. The German is Vice President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Facebook’s parent company Meta. But when she was asked to chair the meeting of a Europe-wide project involving 28 countries a few years ago, her name tag was in the back corner. «The organizers assumed that I was the secretary. I was the project manager!», says Gifford on the sidelines of an EqualVoice event organized by Ringier at the WEF in Davos GR.
Managers like Gifford are still in the minority at the WEF – and have countless such and similar anecdotes to tell. 47 percent of the sessions at this year’s WEF will be moderated by women. If you look at the entire list of participants, the proportion of women is 27 percent. That’s a record – “but we still have a long way to go,” admits WEF spokesman Samuel Werthmüller.
Pandemic has thrown back equality
“When I first attended the WEF a few years ago, there were still many purely male panels. Today that is the exception,” praises Julie Teigland (53). She manages the business in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa for the consulting company EY, has 150,000 employees under her.
But she also says: “I can’t believe how incredibly slow the progress towards equality is.” According to the WEF’s annual Global Gender Gap Report, at today’s pace it will take another 132 years for gender equality to become a reality. In 2019, the WEF still expected 99.5 years. The corona pandemic has set back the fight for equality by decades.
A shortage of skilled workers is causing companies to rethink
Women work more often in sales, in the hotel and catering industry or in childcare – and have lost their jobs disproportionately often in the pandemic. Many have not returned to the labor market since then. “In the USA alone, the pandemic has robbed us of 1.7 million female workers,” calculates Becky Frankiewicz (50). The American sits on the management board of the Manpower Group, one of the largest recruitment agencies in the world.
This is a problem, especially in times of a shortage of skilled workers. “Integrating women better into the labor market is not only the right thing to do morally – it is also the right thing to do economically!” emphasizes Frankiewicz. The labor market specialist recommends that companies should offer more flexible working models so that work and family can be better combined. Not only women benefit from this, but also men.
«Slip into bigger shoes and just walk in them»
Many high-profile managers and politicians at the WEF say they are tired of talking only about equality in interviews. They are in Davos because they successfully manage large corporations with multi-million budgets and hundreds of thousands of employees, or because they lead the governments of entire countries. Nevertheless, they are often only interviewed when it comes to women’s issues. Not the most successful industrial, tech or consulting groups.
This will probably only change in the long term when 50 percent of the WEF participants are female, not like 27 percent today. And the women are at least partly responsible for that themselves, says meta manager Angie Gifford: “Women must also have the courage to slip into bigger shoes and just walk in them.”