One of the best columns that came out of the Davos business love fest was this blog by Anya Schiffrin, the wife of Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. In that entry, she really skewers the way the business world, particularly the elite at Davos, have treated women like second class citizens. In particular, she looks at the wives, mistresses and aspiring mistresses of the men who attend the annual event.
Schiffrin writes: "Wives feel sympathetic to their husbands and share their pain. But we have our own problems to cope with. After all, we are the on the bottom rung of the Davos ladder. The most revealing sign of our lowly status is that we are forced to wear the ultimate badge of shame – the white name tag. Here is how it works: everyone at Davos has to wear a name tag and these are color coded by status/occupation (speaker, organizer, journalist etc). Usually these name tags include some kind of affiliation, such as the company or organization you work for. But wives' name tags state only their name. This means there is nothing on it that could help a stranger strike up a conversation. If you don't use your husband's name then you are guaranteed virtual anonymity. Upon being introduced to someone new, the normal Davos gesture is not to look at the face of the person they are meeting but to look down at his/her name tag. The wives' name tag guarantees that the Davos man in question will instantly decide you are of no value and so he immediately looks over your shoulder for the next best opportunity, i.e. someone without a white name tag who is, by definition, more important than you … But if wives have it bad, mistresses, who are invited under a variety of guises and usually wind up with a white name tag, have it worse. Typically their men are swallowed up by a tsunami of meetings and interviews and don't have the time or inclination to take their mistresses around with them. Often these men go to high-level dinners to which wives and mistresses are not invited. The skinny and beautifully dressed Davos Mistress typically hangs around the auditoriums waiting for a couple of minutes with her man. While waiting, she keeps her eyes peeled looking to search and destroy the competition. The only thing worse than a white pass, is no pass. Rumor has it (heard first-hand from more than one jealous Davos Mistress) that there are legions of women – let's call them the aspiring mistresses – who do not get a coveted Davos invitation and badge and so can not enter the Congress Centre but who come anyway. They book a hotel room and prowl the streets hoping to snare their prey. They are the worst enemies of the Davos Mistress."
Writing in the Financial Times, Gillian Tett says that this cuts both ways.
While women are being treated like a lower order of being, the financial crisis has hurt unemployed men a lot more than women who tend to be better educated. She says it's time to address both issues which are interconnected.
"A world where the global Davos elite are (almost exclusively) male is certainly not a good thing.'' Tett says. "But nor is a world plagued by marginalised, unemployed, uneducated, poor men. Perhaps those WEF organisers should stage a broader discussion on gender next year – with attention to both tales."
no comment untill now