00:00They call it a race to the top, but women are still being left behind.
00:05The World Economic Forum says progress towards gender parity in leadership has stalled for a fourth year in a row.
00:12At this rate, women are still 90 years away from equality in the top jobs.
00:17Sadia Zahidi is Managing Director at the World Economic Forum.
00:21I think we're still seeing some of the after effects of the pandemic and what happened then
00:26when there was a big shift downwards in terms of women in leadership roles in business.
00:31And there is that broader pattern as well, which is that about 46 percent of entry level roles are occupied
00:37by women across all industries on average.
00:40And then you get to the C-suite and that turns to 23 percent.
00:43So we've got this overall lack of progression inside companies.
00:48And then that got hit by a shock during the pandemic.
00:50And we're still essentially seeing some of the recovery from that.
00:53Some of the strongest progress in this report, though, is coming from lower income economies, several outpacing wealthier nations entirely.
01:01What are they getting right? The richer economies are getting wrong.
01:06Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting.
01:08On the one hand, it is very clear that if you invest in your human capital, you'll grow faster.
01:13You'll be more competitive, more productive.
01:15On the other hand, there is no particular reason that you have to be waiting to become a richer economy
01:20to then be able to actually invest in gender equality.
01:24Most of these countries, what they've done is start to make the basic investments in health and education,
01:29but also try to ensure that the labor market is open to women.
01:32In many cases, these are countries where there have been very specific efforts to put women into political positions.
01:38Looking at sectors, AI is one of the newest, fastest growing industries in the world without those decades of old
01:45hierarchies to undo.
01:47Should that make parity easier to reach or does just the same pattern just keep repeating regardless?
01:54So unfortunately, what we find is that the AI industry as a whole is essentially replicating those patterns.
02:00In fact, it may even be at an additional disadvantage because across all levels, from the earliest levels to through
02:08to the very top of AI organizations,
02:10you're seeing a bigger gender gap than in non-AI organizations.
02:14You're also seeing that women are concentrated in data annotator roles, for example,
02:20but not so much when it comes to AI engineers or machine learning engineers.
02:24So you're seeing overall the very same pattern.
02:26But I think that at the same time, because it's a new economy, because this is a new industry,
02:31it's also much faster to change these patterns.
02:34At the World Economic Forum, you talk about gender parity in terms of there being a business case for it,
02:40not just a fairness case.
02:41So what does getting this wrong actually cost a company or an economy?
02:48So at a national level, it's very clear.
02:50You have the human capital base that you have in your population.
02:53If you have not invested in the health and education of women equally to men,
02:58and if you've then not invested in equally ensuring that that human capital can be deployed across the economy
03:03and across leadership positions, you're losing out on half your talent in some form or the other.
03:08At a company level, not only is there that case,
03:11but there's also the additional piece that time and time again,
03:14research has shown that teams that are more diverse tend to produce the most innovative and most creative ideas.
03:20And that's what we need today.
03:22That is going to be the future engine of growth.
03:24So both at a country level and at a company level,
03:27those that don't understand the economic case, they're going to be losing out.
Comments