Employment, Skills and Human Capital
For geopolitics, 2020 has been a year of paradoxes. The rapid spread of the virus exposed just how interconnected and globalized the world is, as countries grappled with the common experience of a new disease. There was even a sense of global community – as health workers were praised around the world with a nightly clap and tech-enabled global concerts took place, such as One World: Together at Home. A new World Economic Forum-Ipsos survey finds that most adults are uniquely optimistic about accessing technology, digital tools and training in the next 12 months. This is amid general pessimism about other aspects of life, such as health, employment and climate change. With COVID-19 infections and deaths continuing to rise and the entire world feeling the economic impact of the pandemic, getting the coronavirus under control is an immediate priority. Even prior to COVID-19, our world was facing a number of challenges that made our current systems unsustainable, from rising inequality to a need to rapidly reskill populations for the jobs of the future to accelerating climate change and biodiversity loss, to name just a few. Following the 2020 Annual Meeting in Davos, World Economic Forum President Børge Brende called for “another period of multilateral renewal” in order for the world to tackle the multitude of economic, environmental and technological risks ahead. With more than 2 million COVID-19 deaths worldwide and rising, getting the virus under control is a top priority for 2021. COVID-19 has accelerated the deployment of new technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution – reshaping how we work, shop, learn, socialize, even visit the doctor in ways likely to remain permanent long after the pandemic is under control. The COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis unlike any we’ve seen in our lifetimes – and getting control of the virus and ensuring citizens around the world are vaccinated are top public health priorities. The World Economic Forum last year launched a new “Davos Manifesto” in support of stakeholder capitalism, which says companies should “pay their fair share of taxes, show zero tolerance for corruption, uphold human rights throughout their global supply chains and advocate for a competitive level playing field,” as Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab explained. In May, the world’s top risk professionals identified “prolonged recession of the global economy” as the most feared risk of COVID-19. The events of the past year have disrupted work, education and society. A year ago at the Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos – heeding the advice of speakers including Greta Thunberg, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Prince Charles – government, business and civil society committed to take more concrete action on climate change and save the planet from a hot, smoky, polluted demise. The COVID-19 pandemic has further unveiled the decline of our international institutions. But it also reminds us that our biggest problems are global in nature. Whether it’s pandemics, climate change, terrorism or international trade, all are global issues that we can only address or mitigate collectively. For much of the recent past, the rise and rise of new technologies has seemed inexorable, snowballing along under its own momentum, and it has come to define a new era, the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The breakneck pace of this new era, with its accompanying life-changing technologies, has been disruptive, raising a range of ethical questions – about genetics, robots, algorithms – and what it means to be human. Like lemmings, we, too, have been swept along, fuelled by a blind faith in this relentless march of progress. As the third decade of the 21st century gets under way, we will look back on 2021 as a year when the future of our life on earth balanced on a fulcrum. But which way will we lean? Will we grind out a post-COVID-19 recovery along the lines of the recovery from the last great global financial crisis in 2009 towards a more dangerous future of higher consumption and emissions? Or will policy-makers, politicians, business leaders and civil society summon their collective imaginations, cooperative spirit and willpower to craft stimulus packages and investments that lead to a more sustainable, nature-friendly future? COVID-19 has been a wake-up call for business, shining an unsparing spotlight on the vulnerabilities of many organizations and pulling forward changes in working practices that were expected to take years into a matter of weeks. A cartoon from The New Yorker magazine last November depicts a caveman and cavewoman crouched in the opening of their dark cave. The woman is hard at work rubbing sticks to make fire while her man, sitting idly by, remarks: “Stop saying everything is ‘unprecedented’.” With the COVID-19 pandemic underscoring the need for greater global cooperation, political and business leaders from across the globe are set to convene from 25- 29 January to take part in the World Economic Forum’s virtual Davos Agenda event. The pandemic defied every management and organizational system, pushing everyone to their limits, until a transition toward agile, ever-evolving methods began to emerge. 2020 was an interesting year, to say the least – many companies emerged with a fresher face, reinventing themselves along the way. Perhaps the most telling realization was that the key to survival in any catastrophe is empathy. During the financial crisis of 2008, the world had the opportunity to shape a more sustainable economy. According to economist Nicholas Stern, the economic and technological conditions at the time would have made it easier to make progress on climate change. But we failed to grasp it. For some time now, there has been talk about how leaders developing AI applications need to build “fair AI”; this should be unbiased and equitable, ideally improving the quality of life of everyone it touches. • Women make up the majority of the global unbanked population. The pandemic has given our environment a much-needed breather – with carbon emissions falling by a record 7% in 2020 – and has painfully revealed the hard work required to slow down detrimental climate change. As the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic continue to play out globally, the major long-term threat facing humanity – climate change – has not vanished. Whilst it is currently difficult to imagine a world in which COVID-19 isn’t part of our daily conversations, we will get there eventually. It is critical for our future how we respond to and recover from this crisis.Show Agenda posts
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What changes in global and regional cooperation will 2021 bring? Here’s what business leaders say
Sunday 24th of January 2021
What technology changes will 2021 bring? Here’s what business leaders say
Sunday 24th of January 2021
What changes to environmental stewardship will 2021 bring? Here’s what business leaders say
Sunday 24th of January 2021
What changes to industry and society will 2021 bring? Here’s what business leaders say
Sunday 24th of January 2021
Davos Agenda: What you need to know about geopolitics
Sunday 24th of January 2021
What changes to economic systems will 2021 bring? Here’s what business leaders say
Sunday 24th of January 2021
Davos Agenda: What you need to know about technology
Sunday 24th of January 2021
Davos Agenda: What you need to know about the future of global health
Sunday 24th of January 2021
Davos Agenda: What you need to know about better business
Sunday 24th of January 2021
Davos Agenda: What you need to know about the global economy
Sunday 24th of January 2021
Davos Agenda: What you need to know about the future of work
Sunday 24th of January 2021
Davos Agenda: What you need to know about saving the planet
Sunday 24th of January 2021
The rise of the big idea
Sunday 24th of January 2021
How to build a trustworthy and connected future
Sunday 24th of January 2021
Will 2021 be the year of living dangerously?
Sunday 24th of January 2021
Redefining the business of business
Sunday 24th of January 2021
Our moment to choose a fairer, more sustainable world
Sunday 24th of January 2021
Who’s who at Davos Agenda Week 2021
Saturday 23rd of January 2021
How 2020 taught businesses to place empathy before profit
Saturday 23rd of January 2021
How technology can drive a sustainable economic recovery
Saturday 23rd of January 2021
How to ensure fair AI throughout the supply chain
Saturday 23rd of January 2021
Tech can reach the world’s unbanked women – but only if they tell us how it should work
Friday 22nd of January 2021
How to combine the physical and digital worlds to enable successful, sustainable business
Friday 22nd of January 2021
How the MENA region can shape the post-COVID-19 sustainability agenda
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Companies must focus on resiliency, profitability and sustainability
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Gender Parity
• Women make up the majority of the global unbanked population. Indy Mellink, a Dutch card fan, was explaining a game to her cousins last summer when she asked herself: why should a king be worth more than a queen? • Despite making key contributions in the technology sector, Black people continue to face barriers to entry. Marian Croak has a unique way of looking at the world. It probably explains why the inventor of one of 2020’s most essential technologies – Voice over Internet Protocol – and Google’s Vice-President of Engineering has hundreds of patents to her name. Diversity efforts may have given women a seat at the table – or, in the context of the pandemic, a place on the Zoom call – but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have a voice. The female population in U.S. jails has risen as the male population has declined. Many women enter jails suffering mental health crises and addictions, and sometimes pregnant. Yet local lockups are ill-equipped to handle this growing population pool. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the economic downturn it has caused, have hit everyone hard. But the impact has not been spread equally. A new report by UN Women has found clear evidence that, although both genders have seen their unpaid workloads increase, women are bearing more of the burden than men. Business magazine Forbes has published its 2020 list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women. A global look at how people spend their time Insurance company Zurich saw a 16% increase in women applying for roles after adding six words relating to flexible working to their job ads. • The Meritocracy Stress Test does for equality what the bank stress test did for liquidity. The world’s biggest companies have been recruiting fewer women to chief executive roles since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research. On November 25, 1960, three political activists, the Mirabal sisters, were brutally killed in the Dominican Republic. To mark this day, raise awareness, and encourage action, the world now observes the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women every year in their honor. Scotland on 24th November made sanitary products free to all women, becoming the first nation in the world to take such a step against “period poverty.” • COVID lockdowns trapped many domestic violence victims with their abusers. Six women are killed by men every hour in a “global pandemic of femicide” that is being partly hidden by COVID-19 – and the United Nations is calling for urgent action. If you’ve ever wondered how a Zoom call works, you might want to ask Marian Croak, Vice-President of Engineering at Google. In today’s America, a middle-class life will cost you, on average, 30% more than it would have 20 years ago. Relative to the change in middle-class income since 1980, housing costs have increased by approximately 100 percentage points; healthcare costs have grown by nearly 200 percentage points; and the price of education has soared by more than 600 percentage points. No country has achieved gender equality, and the glass ceiling remains intact. This is the warning from the United Nations in its 2020 edition of “The World’s Women: Trends and Statistics.” While many governments have taken positive measures to support women and girls disproportionately affected by COVID-19, the response remains “insufficient and uneven”. This is the view of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and UN Women, which have launched the COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker to track government action across 206 countries and territories. This Q&A is an edited version of an interview with Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, which took place ahead of the Jobs Reset Summit. Office life will be different after COVID-19, with desks far apart, Plexiglass barriers and a health warning on handshakes. But the biggest change could be a notable absence of women. As world leaders determine a path forward for the global economy, we must ensure women and women-led small businesses are not left behind. Investing in women-led small and micro businesses (SMBs) pays dividends in communities around the globe because women use their resources to reinvest in the health, education and well-being of their families and neighbors. As corporations, governments, organizations and educational institutions confront what diversity and inclusion looks like from the inside, one UK hiker has created a community for people of colour outdoors. • COVID-19 has disproportionately affected older people – both directly and indirectly.Show Agenda posts
View more Gender posts
Tech can reach the world’s unbanked women – but only if they tell us how it should work
Friday 22nd of January 2021
How a genderless card deck might make you think differently about inequality
Friday 22nd of January 2021
Stitching up racism: how knitting is helping break down barriers in South African tech
Thursday 21st of January 2021
3 women of colour on how to boost diversity from the outside in
Sunday 17th of January 2021
Why women don’t speak up on Zoom calls – and why that’s a problem
Thursday 7th of January 2021
Dying inside: The hidden crisis in America’s jails
Tuesday 22nd of December 2020
Unequal burden: how the COVID-19 pandemic is adding to women’s workloads
Friday 18th of December 2020
These are the world’s most powerful women
Friday 18th of December 2020
How do people spend their time? This chart takes a global look
Wednesday 16th of December 2020
Zurich added these 6 words to job adverts and more women applied
Tuesday 8th of December 2020
Take the Meritocracy Stress Test to find out the truth about diversity in your company
Friday 4th of December 2020
Fewer women CEOs have been appointed since the start of the COVID-19 crisis – here’s why
Thursday 3rd of December 2020
The shadow pandemic: COVID-19 has resulted in a rise of violence against women in the Caribbean
Wednesday 2nd of December 2020
This country has become the first in the world to make sanitary products free
Thursday 26th of November 2020
Domestic violence soared in lockdown – but we can stop this hidden pandemic
Wednesday 25th of November 2020
As the UK publishes its first census of women killed by men, here’s a global look at the problem
Wednesday 25th of November 2020
The woman who created the technology behind internet calls explains what it takes to innovate
Thursday 19th of November 2020
How women will drive the revival of the middle class
Wednesday 11th of November 2020
The state of women’s leadership in 5 statistics
Tuesday 3rd of November 2020
Are countries doing enough to support women through the pandemic?
Thursday 29th of October 2020
COVID isn’t gender neutral- it hit women hardest. How to reset the world of work, by the head of UN Women
Friday 23rd of October 2020
Could COVID-19 widen the workplace gender gap?
Friday 16th of October 2020
Why investing in women small and micro business owners will help the global economy recover
Friday 9th of October 2020
This Black British hiker is tackling exclusion from the outdoors
Monday 5th of October 2020
Why improving women’s lives is the key to healthy ageing
Thursday 1st of October 2020
