The 18th Global Summit of Women GSW ), or informally called the "Davos for Women", will run from June 5-7 in Hanoi, Vietnam, with the theme of "Women and Asia: Driving the Global Economy."

The summit will bring together over 900 business women, professional and government leaders from 70 economies around the world.

The 2008 GSW will explore two of the major forces that will impact the 21st century global marketplace – women and the Asia-Pacific economies.

The GSW , a Washington-based non-governmental organization established in 1990, has been held every year since 1997. The summit president is Irene Natividad of the United States.

The summit is an international forum to connect female entrepreneurs, experts, government leaders from all over the world, for the establishment of a global women coalition in order to share the best practices, successful business strategies, to deal with the problems that women are facing with in their business, to raise the role of women not only in business but also in all political-social activities.

After 18 years of operation, the GSW has become an international forum that links and assembles prestigious and influential women to petition to Governments about the solution for business problems and gender equality in the global economy.

The 17th GSW was held in Berlin, Germany under the theme of " Global Opportunities and Challenges". In a powerful display of womanpower, more than 1,000 businesswomen from 95 countries took part in the summit, which concluded by announcing the launch of an international "consortium to end cervical cancer".

Other previous summits were hosted by Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1999; London, UK in 1998; Miami, Florida in 1997; Taipei, China 's Taiwan in 1994 and Dublin, Ireland in 1992.

The first Global Summit of Women was held in Montreal, Canada in 1990.

(Xinhua News Agency June 5, 2008)