Beijing: Photographs from the recent bilateral summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing have sparked debate online after observers noted the complete absence of women in the official delegations.
The high-level meeting, held at the Great Hall of the People, featured senior officials from both countries seated around the negotiating table. However, images released from the summit showed only men participating in the formal discussions.
Criticism over absence of women
A painting of the end of meritocracy: A meeting of the two largest economies and not one woman at the table. pic.twitter.com/FM7lwQrRGT
— Gita Gopinath (@GitaGopinath) May 14, 2026
The visuals drew criticism from academics and commentators who questioned the message conveyed by the all-male diplomatic setting.
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 later to The Guardian, Gopinath elaborated further, saying, “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.”
She also added, “It’s just inexplicable how you end up with a single-gender table, given the many talented women around the world.”
Comparisons with Obama era
Halima Kazem, associate director for Stanford University’s feminist, gender and sexuality studies programme, also criticised the absence of women at the summit.
Comparing the current images with earlier US-China bilateral meetings during the presidency of Barack Obama, Kazem said, “We’ve gone backward. 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 absence of women was symbolic of the type of authority both governments were projecting globally.
“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 women were absent from the formal summit table, a few accompanied Trump during his two-day Beijing visit. These included Lara Trump, along with Jane Fraser and Dina Powell McCormick.
Previous US-China summits during the Obama administration had included senior women officials such as Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and former Chinese vice-premier Liu Yandong.