Davos attendees have assembled in Switzerland for the four-day World Economic Forum conference, where they will rub shoulders with 2,500 delegates, including 40 heads of state and 14 Nobel Laureates, to discuss the theme: “Mastering the fourth industrial revolution”.
Delegates are given a colour-coded badge that acts as the World Economic Forum's own kind of caste system, so there can be no confusion between technicians and heads of state.
According to this system, the wives and girlfriends of the most prestigious guests get grey badges to grant them access to the events.
Only the WAGs of white badge holders are able to attend, according to Reuters.
White badge holders include corporate executives, government officials and media officials. These are the attendees that get access all areas to sessions, lunches, dinners and night caps, as long as they are on the list.
Such sessions are also off-the-record, so white badge holders and their WAGs are protected from the media glare.
Meanwhile orange badges grant limited access to the hotels and media participants, purple badges are for technicians that work behind the scenes and green badges are for officials accompanying heads of state.
There's a new marker on some of the badges this year: V signals a veteran, someone who has attended for more than 10 years, while N signals someone new.
Those grey badges will be especially handy in telling female delegates, who make up just one in five attendees, from WAGs.
Barri Rafferty, CEO of Ketchum North America, told Fortune last year that there are so few women invited that at the evening events, people often assumed that any woman present must be someone's wife.
