Anya Schiffrin

To my great surprise this year, the Davos registration forms arrived with a space for Davos Wives to fill in our institutional affiliation. Having written last year about the humiliations of the blank badge, I’ve decided to take full credit for this major step forward for womankind: the recognition that we have lives outside our existence as the Wives of Davos men. My editor Chrystia Freeland is now waiting for a change in policy that would allow Davos mistresses to also list their affiliations.

When I wrote my column last year, I didn’t expect the outpouring of responses from Davos Wives, but I was delighted to find myself buttonholed by many in my cohort who longed to share their experiences of being snubbed at Davos.

While walking down the Promenade of Davos Platz on a sunny winter morning looking for a place to have a decent cup of hot chocolate (tip: better wait till you are in Zurich), I was approached by a Davos wife I’d never seen before. She thanked me for saying in my Reuters columns what she and other white-badged wives had been thinking for years.

She got the absurdity of our situation and knows that the way to cope is to laugh. “I love the snubs,” she said, and then explained how she handles the working lunches. “My strategy is to sit at the end of the table because then only one man is ignoring me while playing with his smartphone.

“The worst was the time I put my bag down, went to get a drink, and then realized I was sitting next to Abdullah Abdullah, who had just lost an election. He didn‘t come to Davos to talk to me, so I got up and moved to another table to sit with some wives.”

It’s a well-known fact that men behave badly at Davos. The alcohol, the chance to rub elbows with and even talk to other VIPs, the excess amounts of testosterone, and in some cases the joy of a limo ride from Zurich Airport all give rise to a competitive atmosphere in the hothouse known as the World Economic Forum.

Less widely discussed is the fact that the edgy atmosphere sometimes crosses over into overt unpleasantness and sexual aggression. Single women at Davos report that at times they are prey to unwelcome advances that range from annoyingly uncomfortable to downright threatening. It’s not that surprising, given the fact that Davos is a truly male-centered event.

In quiet corners of the Convention Center, I’ve heard a few ugly stories whispered to me by the women involved, and the men in question don’t come out at all well. There is the former U.S. government official who spent a couple of days trailing around after a decidedly-not-interested single friend of mine — to the merriment of onlookers, who could not avoid seeing the unwholesome spectacle. There was the evening at the gala dinner, when I saw a glamorous blonde being hotly pursued by a drunk Swiss man who spent hours with his arm draped over her shoulders trying to entice her into joining him at a nearby piano bar where they could be alone together.

I am starting to think that the average lily-livered man may not be able to face the vicissitudes of life at Davos and that we women are much better suited for the event’s rampant paranoia, ego smashing and petty humiliations.

Because we are Davos Wives, we know how to cope. A more important husband means more blatant snubs for the spouse and that means more hilarity. I loved the  gorgeous prime minister’s wife  who , after reading one of my columns last year, approached me, laughing. “Thank you so much,” she said. “This stuff happens to me all the time. Often the security people won’t even let me get into the car with my husband.”

Meanwhile an aggressive and hard-hitting London QC came to Davos one year and folded after only a few days. He refused to return the following year despite the entreaties of his friends who were attending. “It’s awful. I don’t even want to like it,“ he said. “And besides it’s probably passé and Klaus Schwab is just sooooo……”  Yes ? And what exactly  is your complaint? We Davos regulars all know these things, but they are beside the point.

What is the pre-Davos season like in your household?

Planning for Davos starts quite early in the year. Months before it actually begins there is the inevitable jockeying for spots on desirable panels with important people, a frantic glance every day at the e-mail to see if any interesting dinner invitations have come in, and a hunt for a hotel room in a location not too far from the conference venue. Wives like me don’t have to do any work at Davos so I just think about packing. Moisturizer is crucial, since the mountain air is so dry, and I will try to rustle up a couple of respectable outfits that I can wear by day and at the evening dinners as well. Then there is footwear. You can carbon date Davos Wives by their shoes. Newcomers tend to wear attractively dainty heels. Veterans like me have given up. I don sturdy shoes and try not to slip on the ice.

What are likely to be the main themes at Davos this year?

Davos tends to be more interesting during periods of social upheaval. Confronted with facts that threaten his worldview, Davos Man loses some of his smugness and becomes a bit more confused. Founder Klaus Schwab is always interested in the zeitgeist, so there will doubtless be many panels about the global protests, the euro crisis, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street. How Davos Man will respond I don’t know. My favorite comment during a panel on global warming a few years ago came from a businessman who reminded his audience that one upside to global warming is the ease of drilling for oil under glaciers. This year there will be more security, plenty of gloomy observations about the state of the world economy, questions about whether China can maintain its expansion, and so on. We’ll also see a lot more conservative heads of state at Davos this year, since so few social democratic governments survived the elections and turmoil of 2011.

How do Davos Wives occupy themselves while Davos Man works?

We go to any panels we can actually get into. Usually that means the ones about art and science, which Davos Man tends to skip. Last year’s panel on the pollution of the world’s seas was packed with wives. When we can’t get into a panel we may repair to a local café for hot chocolate or sign up for the perennial horse-drawn carriage ride to a fondue restaurant up in the hills. If all else fails, we can always prowl the halls of the conference center, hoping for a sighting of Bono or Tony Blair.