by Martina Fuchs

GENEVA, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- China plays a critical role in promoting gender equality on a global scale, with women being a key catalyst for economic empowerment, said the founder of the leading business community 100 Women @ Davos.

"China is the world's second-biggest economy, it is so critically important for the world. There are amazing Chinese women in entrepreneurship that the world can learn from," Dr. Anino Emuwa told Xinhua in a recent virtual interview.

The 2025 World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting, which kicked off on Monday in Davos, Switzerland, brought together leaders from government, business and civil society, as well as scientific and cultural thinkers, under the theme "Collaboration for the Intelligent Age."

100 Women @ Davos is a community of female CEOs, leaders, and change-makers originally launched in Davos in January 2019 in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 to "ensure women's full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership."

"We need more collaboration with China," Emuwa said. "I would like to stretch out a hand to Chinese female entrepreneurs and have more of them as part of 100 Women @ Davos next year."

"We must have collaboration and concerted efforts in three main areas: government policies, organization policies, and we need a change in behavior, attitudes, and unconscious and real biases," Emuwa said.

According to the WEF's 2024 Global Gender Gap Index released in June, it will take 134 years to reach full parity, roughly five generations beyond the 2030 SDG target.

It showed that mobilizing action, exchanging insights, fostering partnerships, combining forces to accelerate economic gender parity and delivering economic transformation, innovation and growth are key to reaching parity.

"We believe that it's important to have the visibility and the voice of women included in global decision-making. This is so important because women are in the minority in terms of leadership," Emuwa said.

"We do a lot of work in terms of advocacy and policymaking, and also with organizations that are focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion," she added. ■