The hoi-polloi are out in Switzerland this week with Bono launching a ‘Red’ credit card to benefit aids, Gates announcing he’s tripling his TB-fund and logistics firms declaring that they’re going to mightily piss of aid charities by pitching in ‘for free’ when a major disaster strikes (implying that Oxfam doesn’t know how to deliver its own aid but DHL does). Davos sucks. It seems like the kind of place where nobody with a real grasp of the outside world could penetrate. It seems so truely undemocratic in the way that it’s the rich and powerful only. Why not ‘the top world executives’ and ‘the world’s top academics’. What’s to stop a bit of critical input? Why is it that only those advisors on the payroll of the rich and famous are given the opportunity to speak to anyone who can make a difference?
At the same time, women don’t yet really have much of a position at the forum, more often than not being mistaken for somebody’s secretary or assistant. Women, it seems, just can’t get out of the shadow of those big strong men!
“When I put my card (down) saying I’m going to speak, before they saw my card they said, `Where’s your minister?’ I said, `I am the minister,’” Al Qasimi said. In social circles, even with her colleagues and employees, “there’s always this assumption that I’m somebody’s wife.”
Washington Post: The World Economic Forum is still an elite club
Popularity: 1% [?]
Not quite the same tone as last Sunday Patrick, when you told me me that it was quite ok for other people to get ignored, as long as those who had the advantages of good education, money etc still reaped the rewards of the old boy system. At least you acknowledge that women are STILL discriminated against…even though [at least here in UK] it has been illegal for years. Today’s Guardian has a good article…
I totally did not say that at all! More to come tomorrow on how untrue it is!
It’s not true!