WEF 2018 first to be chaired entirely by women and this Indian entrepreneur is among them

The World Economic Forum will be led entirely by women this year, and a trailblazing entrepreneur and advocate from India will be one of the co-chairs.

The summit in Davos, Switzerland is the world's leading organization and meeting addressing international economic issues; tackling everything from political and academic topics to opportunities and problems in industries and around the world. The summit is usually led predominantly by men, and this will be the first time in its 48-year history that it will be co-chaired entirely by women.

Chetna Sinha; founder and chair of India's Mann Deshi Foundation, which supports female entrepreneurs; will join others including International Monetary Fund Director Christine Lagarde and Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg.

Sinha has made a career supporting women entrepreneurs—especially rural women entrepreneurs—in India.

Click through to learn more about Sinha's work and the Mann Deshi Foundation, as well as the discussion she will be leading with other women at WEF about "how to create a shared future in a fractured world."

To learn more about the World Economic Forum, visit www.weforum.org.

By Pragya Srivastava

While Narendra Modi will be the first Indian Prime Minister to attend the World Economic Forum in two decades at Davos and all eyes would be on his skills to hard-sell India Inc in the wake of recent reforms to top CEOs of the world, Indian entrepreneur Chetna Sinha will be creating history by becoming a part of ‘all-women’ co-chairs for the first time in 48 years. Chetna Sinha will join world women leaders and entrepreneurs, including IMF Director Christine Lagarde and former Norwegian PM Erna Solberg.

Chetna Sinha is a banker, activist and the president of micro-finance company Mann Deshi Mahila Sahkari Bank. Called a ‘silent crusader’ by Forbes magazine, Chetna Sinha has worked to make Maharashtra’s Mhaswad a destination for women entrepreneurship. Mann Deshi Mahila Sahkari Bank became the first bank in the country for and by rural women to get a cooperative license from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Chetna Sinha’s Mann Deshi Mahila Sahkari Bank aims to provide one million women entrepreneurs with access to knowledge and capital, enabling them to have personal and professional agency in their lives. According to Yale World Fellows, Chetna Sinha abandoned the urban lifestyle to pursue a career in farming in the drought-prone area of Maharashtra. As a result, she experienced first-hand the difficulties facing women in this region, from the lack of financial support to the fact that they were not treated as viable entrepreneurs.

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WEF discusses gender equality

dw.com - The room is small; it won't hold more than 100 chairs. Two cameras are set up, there is a small coffee bar in one of the corners. The walls gleam in friendly cream colors. The women are almost amongst themselves, men are few and far between. "The female quotient @ Davos" is the name of the lounge, which is located on Davos' promenade, the street that almost every participant in the World Economic Forum has to pass through. Many hurry through the snow to their next appointment, others stop and see what the women are actually doing there.

The topics are quite enthralling. "Why diversity is a business imperative" or "The choice we face to reboot our future." Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg was already here, as were Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, and Paul Polman, head of Unilever.

"Gender equality is a leadership issue," emphasizes Amy Weaver, Executive Vice President of Salesforce, a California-based software company with more than 25,000 employees.

When Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff got complaints from employees, he initiated a relentless payroll analysis, only to find out that in some positions in his company, women were being paid less than men. Salesforce made the issue public, restructured and is considered an example of equal pay today. In part due to the boss' personal commitment.

UN Women Executive Director to call on businesses to power up sustainable development and women’s economic empowerment in Davos

unwomen.org - Executive Director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, will travel to Davos, Switzerland for the 47th Annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) from 17 - 21 January. At the WEF, Ms. Mlambo-Ngcuka will meet with leaders in government, civil society and business, to strengthen alliances to drive women’s economic empowerment and call for active engagement and leadership of business in fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals and advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment.

On 17 January, the Executive Director will join a roundtable discussion on women’s economic empowerment, hosted by Tupperware Brands, where the results of new research about confidence as a driver of women’s economic earning will be presented. Later that day, Ms. Mlambo-Ngcuka will provide special remarks on “the challenge of connecting the unconnected from a perspective of women and girls” at a special programme of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development and WEF, “Internet for All”. Together with ITU, the Executive Director will also announce EQUALS: The Global Partnership for Gender Equality in the Digital Age, a global partnership platform that will pool experiences, expertise and resources to scale up good practices that ensure no woman or girl is left behind.

Pakistan’s Fiza Farhan joins UN High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment

We're always excited to see women bringing their specialized skills and knowledge to bear in the fight for women's rights, so we were thrilled to learn of the appointment of Fiza Farhan, co-founder and CEO of the Buksh Foundation, to the new United Nations High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment. Experts on the panel focus on the intersection between economic growth and gender, and use their unique expertise and power to motivate work toward the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, a primary one of which is gender equality. Read below and click through for the full article to learn more about how Farhan and others are on the vanguard of fighting for gender equality, economic empowerment and a more sustainable future.

asiapacific.unwomen.org - In an announcement today Ms. Fiza Farhan from Pakistan has been named as Member of the first ever High-Level Panel of the UN Secretary-General on Women’s Economic Empowerment. The establishment of this distinguished panel was announced in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos with UN Women - the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women - serving as its secretariat.

The panel will provide recommendations for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to improve economic outcomes for women and promote women’s leadership in driving sustainable and inclusive, environmentally sensitive economic growth. It will provide recommendations for key actions that can be taken by governments, the private sector, the UN system and other stakeholders, as well as policy directives needed to achieve the new targets and indicators in the Sustainable Development Goals which call for the economic empowerment of women, and benefits all. The panel is backed by the United Kingdom, the World Bank Group and UN Women.

Read the rest here.