Though organizers of the Munich Security Conference in February took care to stress that 45 percent of its event speakers were female, a photograph of a CEO lunch at the conference suggests that “a lot of old white men” are still running the show. The photo features some 30 monochrome males seated around a long white table with bottled water and wine.
Dr. Jennifer Cassidy, a diplomatic scholar at the University of Oxford, tweeted the image with the accompanying remark: “This is reality. This is where power lies. Where some of the most consequential decisions are made.” In a subsequent tweet, Cassidy reckoned that the “most diverse thing to happen in that room” was that one businessman was sporting an orange tie.
