On the same day the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, stepped down saying she “no longer had enough in the tank to do the job justice”, women leaders met in Davos to discuss how to reach gender parity in leadership.
“Power is very hostile to women, we have just seen it this morning with Jacinda Ardern…” said Arancha Gonzalez Laya, Dean, The Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA), Sciences Po, during the session at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting.
“Politics is an inhospitable place, but it is more inhospitable to women than it is to men. And this is something we should not accept.”
It will take 132 years to close the global gender gap, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2022 – up from 100 years pre-pandemic. But that increases to 155 years for the Political Empowerment subindex, which is only 22% closed and the biggest of the gaps to close.
Political Empowerment is the biggest of the gender gaps to close.
Only 5% of CEOs globally are women, according to a report published in July, while women make up fewer than one in five corporate leadership team members.