The picture is taken at the 2014 Global Summit of Women and was tweeted by Québécois commentator Marie-Andrée Paquet.
“A picture is worth a thousand words” she wrote, and has since attracted almost 1,000 retweets at the time of writing this article.
The male CEOs who come from banking, energy and law are part of a panel called “Redefining the Marketplace: The Business Case for Gender Equality,” discussing how recruiting and fostering female talent can drive a company’s financial success. One of the panellists is former Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo.
The image has created a tempest of incredulity with tweets saying “Please tell me this is not true” and “Is this is a joke? This must be a joke. Tell me it’s a joke?”
Some sections of commentary have defended the image, pointing out that other panels at the summit were made up entirely of women and that this was the male CEO session.
But the idea of excluding women from a dialogue about their inclusion strikes many as backward and bizarre.
The Summit program lists the event as “CEO Forum: Redefining the Marketplace — The Business Case for Gender Equity” creating doubt that the all-male line-up was an official approach.
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