‘Not One Woman At The Table’: Photo Of Trump-Xi China Summit Sparks Backlash for All-Male Delegations
Photos from the high-level meeting at the Great Hall of the People revealed a striking lack of diversity, with only male officials from both nations seated around the negotiating table during the formal talks.
New Delhi: As US President Donald Trump wraps up his high-stakes visit to Beijing- dominated by heavy-hitting talks on trade, the Taiwan flashpoint, and the ongoing Iran war- it was a glaring visual detail that captured global attention.
Despite the monumental geopolitical stakes, the summit sparked intense social media backlash over the absolute absence of women in both the American and Chinese official delegations, drawing sharp criticism from academics and global experts.
Photos from the high-level meeting at the Great Hall of the People revealed a striking lack of diversity, with only male officials from both nations seated around the negotiating table during the formal talks.
The all-male diplomatic lineup quickly drew fire from experts and observers, who questioned the troubling message sent by the complete lack of female representation.
Gita Gopinath, an economics professor at Harvard University, took to X and wrote, “A painting of the end of meritocracy: A meeting of the two largest economies and not one woman at the table.”
Speaking to The Guardian, she labeled the situation "inexplicable," wondering how both superpowers could produce an exclusively "single-gender" table when there is no shortage of highly qualified women globally.
"We have somehow gravitated back to this idea that what matters is your network and not your capabilities - and that matters [in terms of] whether or not you get a seat at the table," Gopinath said.
Obama era comparison
Also condemning the absence of women was Halima Kazem, who serves as the associate director for Stanford University’s feminist, gender, and sexuality studies program, as per news reports.
Contrasting the recent visuals with previous US-China bilaterals under Barack Obama, Kazem remarked, “We’ve gone backward,” pointing out that “Obama-era US-China summits included women at the table.”
She added, “Now neither superpower thinks women belong in the room where great power politics happens. This isn’t just American failure – it’s a bilateral signal that women’s voices don’t matter in shaping the global order.”
‘Masculine, militarised authority’
Kazem further argued that the lack of female representation was highly symbolic, reflecting the specific type of authority both superpowers are trying to project to the rest of the world.
“This wasn’t about lack of qualified women – both countries have plenty in their diplomatic and security establishments. This was a choice about what kind of authority to project: masculine, militarized, and exclusionary,” she said.
“When both superpowers perform power this way, they’re jointly defining what ‘serious’ diplomacy looks like and who gets excluded from it,” Kazem added.
Women on Beijing visit
Although figures like Lara Trump, Jane Fraser, and Dina Powell McCormick accompanied Trump during his two days in Beijing, none had a seat at the formal summit table.
Past US-China meetings under the Obama administration looked very different, routinely including top-tier female officials like Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu Yandong.
Published By : Amrita Narayan
Published On: 16 May 2026 at 08:25 IST