THANK YOU!

UNITING PURPOSE & POWER FOR EQUALITY AT #WFGM21

Two weeks ago, kicking off on November 15th, we held the first ever hybrid  Women’s Forum Global Meeting .With great pride, we united our international community in Paris and online to reflect on this year’s lessons of resilience and hope when facing the Covid-19 global pandemic. The Global Meeting allowed us to get together to think, create and debate on different approaches to tackle gender inequalities.  We sincerely thank you for your participation and engagement in this fight with us. 

With thousands of you gathering for the Global Meeting, hailing from a total of 115 countries, this was our most geographically diverse meeting ever! It goes without saying that we were equally thrilled to welcome  170+ speakers  from across regions, cultures and sectors, and to hold  22 hours of discussions . Our messages reached  30 million people on social media.  We hope you enjoyed the Global Meeting as much as we did and we wanted to share with you our favourite moments of the week.To begin with, for the first time ever we invited all Rising Talents from more than 90+ countries**  to reunite at the Rising Talents Reception in Paris. We had the chance to witness their 7 networking sessions, in partnership with Lazard, on a large variety of topics at the dedicated Rising Talents Hub. We were honoured to have  28 international CEOs and high-level representatives  from the private sector sign our  CEO Champions commitment ‘Towards the Zero Gender Gap’  on five key actions for gender equality. . 

Also, we welcomed for the first time ever  Youth Delegates  at our Global Meeting. We know that the world needs the leadership of a new generation to orchestrate change. With a 100 youth delegates joining us in Paris, 10,000 online passes offered to young people, and young leaders gracing our stage, we were reminded of the complexity of our greatest challenges alongside gender inequality, including the climate crisis and the digital transformation of our world.

We published reports and resources from Daring Circles: our cross-industry working groups convening representatives from business, policymakers, experts, NGOs, and academia for positive impact in business, tech, access to health and climate action.

In addition, we launched  the second edition of our WomenEntrepreneur4Good initiative  to support women-led start-ups in accelerating the green transition, with our partners Procter & Gamble and HEC Paris. We also started a  new mentoring programme  with Ecole CentraleSupélec and with CentraleSupélec Alumni, creating a human connection between 10 future engineers and 10 successful women in STEM. 

As we repeated throughout the Global Meeting, due to the Covid-19 crisis the gender gap has reverted to its state from 36 years ago, meaning that it will now take us 135 years to reach gender parity. 

We are not willing to wait for gender equality to become reality.  Women’s right are being rolled back throughout the world, as we heard in unforgettable testimonies from our speakers.

The current state of affairs requires urgent action.  Today, more than ever, the world needs women’s leadership, purpose and power for positive impact. Now is the time to ensure that commitments are followed up by action.Now is the time to measure our impact, and hold our leaders accountable.Now, we must make up for lost time and ensure that gender equality becomes our reality.

Please feel free to reach out to us with any questions, thoughts or ideas – I would be delighted to hear from you. 

Warm regards,