India's women leaders give Davos a miss

Nita Ambani, Arundhati Bhattacharya, Shobhana Bhartia and Naina Lal Kidwai prominent participants

About 2,500 global leaders, ranging from chief executive officers to heads of states, have reached Davos, Switzerland, to participate in the World Economic Forum (WEF), which kicked off on Wednesday. Of about 100 Indian leaders who arrived at the heavily snow-covered city, the number of women stood at nine, compared to 13 last year.

Founder and chairperson of Dhirubhai Ambani International School Nita Ambani; State Bank of India Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya; HT Media Chairperson Shobhana Bhartia and HSBC India country head Naina Lal Kidwai are among the Indian women business leaders participating at this year’s WEF. ICICI Bank Managing Director and chief executive Chanda Kochhar, a regular at Davos, decided not to attend the summit this year.

As far as the participation of women is concerned, India doesn’t figure on the list of the top 20 nations this year. Of the participants from China, women account for 22 per cent, while for Indonesia, it is 22.7 per cent. At five per cent, India stands among the countries with the least participation of women, according to an interactive tool by Quartz. For the US, participation from women stood at 20.7 per cent.

Among leaders from India Inc attending the WEF this year are Tata group chief Cyrus Mistry, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, Godrej Group Chairman Adi Godrej, Wipro Chairman Azim Premji, Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani, Bajaj Group Chairman Rahul Bajaj, Bharti Group Chairman Sunil Mittal, Essar Group chief executive Prashant Ruia, GMR Group Chairman G M Rao, Hero MotoCorp chief executive Pawan Munjal and Kotak Mahindra Bank Vice-chairman Uday Kotak.

Infosys Vice Chairman and Confederation of Indian Industry President S Gopalakrishnan has Co-Chaired. of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2014.

The theme for the 2014 edition is “The Reshaping of the World: Consequences for Society, Politics and Business. Among India's political leaders Prthiviraj Chavan, Kamal Nath, Praful Patel, Anand Sharma and finance minister P Chidambaram are participating at the annual meet at Davos.

The five-day global meeting would also witness sessions with top policymakers of the world and executive of global companies such as PepsiCo, ArcelorMittal, Google, Yahoo, Bank of America, Microsoft, BP, Citi, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Volkswagen, UBS, Unilever and Standard Chartered.