By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Despite the World Economic Forum’s controversial “quota” system of inviting one woman for every four men to its annual meeting at Davos, the ratio of women in attendance remained small this year. Only 17% of those in attendance last month were female, and, only 20% of those invited to speak on panels were women.

But according to The Guardian’s Jane Martinson, the WEF is standing by its quota system, and hopes that time will bring more women to the table. The organization believes that by engaging more women in top-level decision-making, the economic situation around the world will improve. She wrote, “This idea plays into one theme of this year’s Davos: that as the current economic and political crisis was made by men, the inclusion of more women can only help matters.”

She also quoted Cherie Blair, who had a more pointed take on the situation. “If the world doesn’t start giving a proper platform for women, then it will fall flat on its face.”

While Davos struggled to increase its percentage of establishment women, a group of dynamic young women presented big ideas to leading under-30 change agents at last month’s Sandbox Global Summit in Lisbon, Portugal (where 31% of conference participants were women).

Waiting for change at the top is no longer an option, remarked Kelly Calvin, winner of one of six Bloomberg Businssweek fellowships to the Lisbon conference. She believes it is critical for leaders to pay attention to young women when it comes to our global future, and, she said, many global leaders have not yet realized why.

“I think it should be clear, but unfortunately it’s obviously not clear to today’s leaders. There are more young women going to college and graduate school than ever before, and, in America, more women than men. We are entering the workforce in unprecedented numbers, we are starting businesses like never before, and in a very short time it will no longer be an oddity to see a female global leader, but an expectation.”

She added, “They need to pay attention to us now because our voices are the voices of the very near future.”

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Contributed by EJ Thompson (New York City)

This past May, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, stood in front of me and told me to “lean in.” To jump in, make a change, think big, to “pick a field…and ride it all the way to the top.” It was Barnard College’s graduation ceremony, and all around me were 600 women who, just like me, had completed their education. We had, over the past four years been trained to believe in ourselves as women, as leaders, as intellectuals, as scientists, as writers, as human beings who could make a difference. And Sandberg stood in front of us and told us that yes, there were still inequalities in the work place, but we were poised to make changes.

Her speech was replayed across the country – it was a main photo of the New York Times, it was mentioned in the Huffington Post, Forbes said that she “crushed it.” It was described as a speech for the ages, the one that would be remembered, the most influential one of the graduation speeches that year. It was the speech that sent Barnard College’s class of 2011 off into the great world, and we were ready for it.

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“Our mission is to transform women’s relationship to self worth and money – to empower women to increase their net worth,” said Amanda Steinberg, Founder and CEO of DailyWorth. “There is a lot of media attention around increasing savings and salary potential, but increasing net worth – you don’t hear a lot about it.”

“We want to really understand what the particular issues are around money, and provide engaging and interesting financial information,” she continued. DailyWorth is a web community for women to learn about personal finance in a more engaging, empowering way.

“It’s about freedom of choices in life,” Steinberg explained. “The endgame for many women – even successful ones – is this ideal of the ‘full scholarship.’ So many women still strive toward this husband/provider construct. It’s like some sort of princess rescue fantasy.”

She continued, “But for far too many women, it doesn’t work out that way – and it’s an antiquated idea that lives in our subconscious.”

“The next level of the women’s movement is knowing that you have a choice. You don’t necessarily have to be the breadwinner or the CEO – but you can choose to be.”

“It’s about liberation. Or it is for me, anyway,” Steinberg added.

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Contributed by Vanessa Vallely, Founder of We Are The City

Back in 2008, I was a frustrated career orientated mum of 2. I realised that if I wanted to move on in my career I needed to seek other development opportunities outside of my Corporate environment. It only took me a year or so to work out that developing my career was not at the top of my bosses’ agenda and that my boat wasn’t going to come in, I had to swim out to it.

I had heard of women’s networking groups before, but, to be honest I had bought in to the stereotype that these were feminist gatherings where they burned bras and effigies of men. How wrong could one be?! And who would have thought that my frustration would not only lead me to create a solution to the problem, but through that process I would become such a huge advocate of women’s networks.

Despite my original preconception about their value, researching women’s networks in more detail felt like a sensible place to start. I reverted to the old fashioned Google search, and what appeared was nothing short of information overload. There were multiple groups offering all different kinds of support. Some were industry specific, some were senior Women only, others wanted hard cash for what I could see was little in return. My frustration was the amount of information I would have to wade through in order to make an informed decision about where I invested my time and what I would get in return.

What I actually wanted was a one stop shop that could provide me with a synopsis of all of the City Women’s networks, a centralized place where I could see what events were running in my area, a place where I could read articles written by experts that would contribute to my development or spark my creative juices and if possible (as we are women after all) provide me with a bit of City lifestyle guidance, e.g. where to entertain my clients, where to drink with my colleagues, where to shop in the concrete jungle and perhaps even where to get my nails done!

Despite searching, I quickly found no such website existed. So after a bit of convincing from my husband and friends that this was a good idea, coupled with the results of our market research, www.wearethecity.com was born.

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Contributed by Rachel Cook

I was working as a Futures Trader on the European shift – in the middle of the night, Chicago time – in September 2009 when I first came across an op-ed in The New York Times written by Nick Kristof the month before, “The Women’s Crusade.” I was completely floored by the article – it told the stories of women in the developing world, facing terrifying, seemingly insurmountable odds. And some of these women were able to overcome these odds using a development tool I’d heard little about – microfinance. I was intrigued. Microlending seemed to help women, and it seemed to be a high-return financial investment – both topics of high interest to me.

I’d studied film in undergrad, as well as Economics and English. I’d loved movies since I was a kid.

It occurred to me that this could make an amazing topic for a global documentary film.

But I’ve never made a feature documentary before; I’d made a few shorts in school, and beyond that I knew virtually nothing about production. It was imperative that I surround myself with professionals who could compensate for my own greenness. And I got lucky; I was able to put together a wonderful group of people who are highly seasoned professionals just as passionate about the project as I am, and what’s more, they were willing to volunteer.

So we got started. While maintaining my trading job, the crew and I traveled to South America and filmed in Paraguay in 2010, and we’re only getting started – we’ll continue filming throughout this year.

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