Appier COO Winnie Lee selected as one of the 40 "Women to Watch" by Campaign Asia for 2016

Conversations around gender equality in the workplace have come a long way since the 1950s. But recent events in the industry—a party at Cannes that vetted female invitees based on looks, a Cannes-winning ad that many thought condoned rape, recent incendiary comments by Kevin Roberts—make it seem like just that: a conversation with not enough action behind it.

Furthermore, as we have explored in Social pressures, not bias, hold women back, workplace hurdles to gender equality can be insidiously different across cultures and markets.

Our Women to Watch list celebrates the disruptors: women who have succeeded against all odds and are changing industry norms and practices.

The 40 women we've selected are presented above, in no particular order.

The stories you'll read above show that positive change is taking place. Nonetheless, women are still under-represented in leadership roles, which is why we continue to believe female role models need to be singled out and celebrated in a feature like this. We'll happily stop doing this annual feature when true equality is achieved. Who knows, maybe one day we'll even have to consider launching an annual 'Men to Watch' list.

Finally, to provide more context, we've created a special collection of equality-related recent content, presenting many different viewpoints on this critical issue.

Source: Women to Watch 2016: Agents of change