Women's Forum meeting on competition, cooperation, creation opens in France

Over 1,300 worldwide participants showed up at the opening of the 2013 Women's Forum Global Meeting Wednesday in Deauville, northwest France, to seek innovative forms of competition through cooperation to advance global priorities and women's rights. Hosted the ninth edition of the global meeting, the Women's Forum for the Economy and Society gathered women and men in politics, business, academy, culture, civil society and media to discuss the theme " The Open World: Compete, Cooperate, Create", aiming to forge fresh perspectives on sustainable social progress, economic competition, good government and education and to establish a powerful global network in order to strengthen the influence of women throughout the world. In the keynote address to the audience from some 80 countries and regions, U.S. film-maker Abigail Disney said "We need to create a groundswell of commitment to real change. There must be a surge of new momentum for women's rights world-wide," warning that backlash against women's progress in many regions deserves far more attention. Veronique Morali, President of the Women's Forum for the Economy and Society, said "Our over-riding question is how we can best nourish creativity in the new, 'open' world - with open source, open data, crowd-funding, crowd-sourcing, crowd-marketing and other big new trends." "Our goal is to continue promoting the active participation of women, so that in a world which, more than ever, seeks innovative alternatives, women can be the agents of a movement of optimism, drive and economic and social change," the forum president added. Discussions of creativity are threaded through the conference program and this session of the meeting will also showcase the champions of open innovation in business, science and society and probe what they mean for Big Data, intellectual property and privacy. Further themes to be highlighted at this year's meeting include the future of Europe and a focus on economic, political and social developments underway in Russia. A number of studies will be released in Deauville's session, including McKinsey & Company's 2013 Women Matter, the latest edition in a ground-breaking annual series of studies on the benefits of gender equality in corporate management, the Boston Consulting Group's analysis of the potential contribution of women's equal to France's economic growth and Mazars's new study on how young generation around the world are reacting to recent changes in women's roles. During the three-day session, in addition to four long-term programs including the Cartier Women's Initiative Awards, CEO Champions, Rising Talents, Women in Media, the Women's Forum will join the Orange Foundation to launch a new initiative: Women for Change award, to recognize women who are actors of change and drivers of growth, and to give them resources to expand their initiative to help women and girls. Founded in 2005, the Women's Forum for the Economy and Society is an independent forum to promote women's status in the economy and society, and to look at major social and economic issues from women's perspectives.