Former First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Geeta Gopinathpointing to the lack of female representation in bilateral meetings between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“A picture of the end of meritocracy: a meeting of the two largest economies, but not a single woman at the table,” said the leader, who currently serves as the university’s Gregory and Aniyah Coffey Professor of Economics. Harvard Universitytweeted.
She included in her X post a photo of a meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping, in which women from both delegations were absent from the table.
“We somehow got back to the idea that it’s your network that’s important rather than your abilities — and that’s important [in terms of] Whether you get a seat at the table or not,” she told The Guardian of the situation.
“Given there are so many talented women around the world, it’s puzzling why you would end up with a single-sex table,” she added.
Halima Kazem, associate director of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Stanford University, echoed Gopinath’s sentiments.
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Kazem continued, “This is not due to a lack of qualified women – both countries have ample women in their diplomatic and security agencies. It is a choice about what kind of authority to project: masculine, militarized and exclusive,” adding, “When two superpowers exercise power in this way, they are jointly defining what ‘serious’ diplomacy is and who is excluded.”
During this high-level meeting, President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed several global issues. The two leaders met at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Thursday. Xi Jinping was reportedly hosting Trump at the secretive Communist Party leadership compound in Beijing.
Trump arrived in Beijing with some of America’s biggest CEOs, including Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Jen-Hsun Huang, Larry Fink and others. A handful of women also accompanied him on the trip, including Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser and Meta President Dina Powell McCormick.
