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.

WEF is on the lookout for Africa's top five female innovators

Ventures Africa brings us this news of this year's World Economic Forum for Africa, which will highlight some stars in innovation. Read on for more. 

venturesafrica.com - This May, Africa’s female innovators and entrepreneurs will be in the spotlight based on an opportunity to represent Africa at the 2016 World Economic Forum for Africa as part of the top five role models on the continent in the area of wealth generation and economic empowerment. These five female innovators will be selected from Africa’s “brightest and best” at the discretion of a panel of experts, and will then be invited to participate in the forum at Kigali, Rwanda.

The event will take place from the 11^th to the 13^th of next month, but the search is already on to determine the crop of female innovators and entrepreneurs who would shape Africa’s next generation. And because the World Economic Forum (WEF) is “committed to improving the state of the world,” application for the challenge is not limited to individuals occupying the technology space.

Fashion designers, farmers, artists, retailers, social entrepreneurs, and other such women who have set a standard with their innovative business models and have significantly improved their societies and the lives of the people around them can all register to be one of the top five making a difference at the forum this year. This is also in the spirit of championing inclusivity in the field of innovation which up until recently has been credited to professionals in the technology space.

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