(Eds: Recasting overnight story)Geneva/New Delhi, Nov 15 (PTI) Indian social entrepreneurand activist Chetna Sinha will be among seven all-women co-chairs for the World Economic Forum's annual congregation ofglobal elite in Swiss Alpine town Davos.
Sinha will be joined by IMF's Christine Lagarde, NorwayPrime Minister Erna Solberg, IBM chief Ginni Rometty, ITUCGeneral Secretary Sharan Burrow, CERN Director-General FabiolaGianotti and ENGIE CEO Isabelle Kocher. This will be the firsttime in Geneva-based WEF's nearly five-decade-old history thatits Davos Annual Meeting would have all women co-chairs.
The event is expected to be attended by more than 3,000global leaders from business, government, politics, academiaand social sectors, including over 100 CEOs and severalgovernment leaders from India alone.
This would include nearly 50 heads of state andgovernment, over 300 ministerial-level governmentparticipants, and business representation at the CEO andChairperson levels.
The 48th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting will takeplace on January 23-26 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, underthe theme 'Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World'.
The WEF, which describes itself as an internationalorganisation for public-private cooperation and wasestablished in 1971 as a not-for-profit foundation, hosts itsannual meeting in Davos every year in January.
In a statement announcing its co-chairs for 2018 meeting,the WEF said over 3,000 leaders, representing 100 countriesfrom around the world, will gather in a collaborative effortto shape the global, regional and industry agendas, with acommitment to improve the state of the world.
Sinha has been a social entrepreneur, a microfinancebanker, an economist, a farmer and an activist.
Since 1986, she has been working with marginalisedcommunities and is Founder and President of Mann Deshi MahilaBank and Mann Deshi Foundation.
She has also partnered with global organisations todevelop corporate community partnership programmes that allowthe corporate sector in the US and Europe to gain a uniqueview of the impact that microfinance initiatives have on thelocal rural population.
Among other co-chairs, the International Monetary Fund(IMF) Managing Director Lagarde has been a regular at Davosand became the first woman to helm the IMF in 2011, whileBurrow of International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) isknown as an expert on education, industrial relations andsocial policy.
Gianotti became the first female Director-General of theEuropean Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) last year,while ENGIE's Kocher is the first Frenchwoman to lead acompany in Paris's CAC 40 stock market benchmark index.
The WEF, which has been criticised in the past in somequarters for relatively lower women presence, said these co-chairs represent both the public and private sectors,international organisations, organised labour, academia andscience as well as civil society and social entrepreneurship.
"They will lend a strong voice to all parts of society,ensuring a multistakeholder approach to the programme andeventually the impact of the Annual Meeting 2018," it added.
The Forum further said the programme of the 2018 AnnualMeeting will explore the root causes of, and pragmaticsolutions for, the manifold political, economic and socialfractures facing global society today.
"Creating a shared future in a fractured world requiresaddressing issues on the global agenda in a holistic,interconnected and future-oriented way," WEF's Founder andExecutive Chairman Klaus Schwab said. PTI BJSBT.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.