Saudi Gazette JEDDAH – Despite females filling more university seats than males in Saudi Arabia, only 20 percent of the current workforce are occupied by women. The latest report on women's careers in the GCC published by Pearl Initiative in 2015 revealed that 52 percent of university students are women. Only 0.1 percent of board seats and 7 percent of legislators, managers and senior officials are held by women, according to executive director of Pearl Initiative Imelda Dunlop who recently led a roundtable with 60 business leaders in Riyadh to discuss possible solutions for promoting women into higher positions. "There's a huge gap but things are improving in the entry and workforce level of the pipeline. Now it's a matter of translating that into more senior levels," she said. Pearl Initiative, a non-profit organization, has worked with the private sector to improve corporate accountability and transparency in the GCC region during the last 5 years. Speaking to Saudi Gazette, Dunlop said there has to be a top-down approach to achieve gender diversity in corporations. "It has to come from the top and come out strongly because that sets the tone within the whole company. It's really important for the middle-level management to have a culture in the company that's not acting as a blockage. All of the middle managers should be on board with the importance of this and they should be supportive in promoting women and giving them difficult roles." Although there was a reluctance to hire women in the past, very few companies today don't employ women at all. There are companies that have come to believe it important for their business, especially those dependent on a female customer market. Dunlop said "many of them are companies that have seen the direct benefit of having more women in senior levels because it really helps them to be much more directly successful in the business." She added that corporate leaders have seen the competitive aspect of a thriving business when having a diverse mix of views and experience at the executive level. "You need a mix of men and women in your executive committee to have much more productive discussions and coming to more effective decisions." The meeting also discussed ways to make a better work environment for women and changing it into a more flexible one. "Many women are balancing juggling work and family life. It really helps if companies have quite a flexible approach to working," she said. Thirty four percent of women in a survey said sacrificing family life is an obstacle to their career aspirations. Only 6 percent feel they lack "enough experience". The latest technology offers efficient communication, making it easier and give a lot of opportunities for women. Additionally, it makes it possible to work from home when needed if managers would focus on output delivered instead of hours spent in the office. "Communication is not a barrier anymore," she further said, referring to technology facilitating even the most technical jobs, like engineers. "This is making a big difference toward bringing women being able to use their skills the maximum within the workplace." While breaking the corporate glass ceiling has been a global challenge for women around the world, one solution deemed to be effective is mentoring qualified women in middle management positions that have potential to ascend to higher levels. Leaders in companies should be personally responsible of looking at the layers below them, says Dunlop, and identifying high performance and making an effort to mentor those challenges. When asked about what kind of role models should be responsible, she said, "I think it's important to have female role models who have made it through." "The more women entering an organization see that it is possible for women ahead of them in senior levels." While Saudi Arabia and Qatar both rank the lowest among its GCC neighbors in having women in senior positions in corporations with 7 percent, the highest is Kuwait at 14 percent followed by similar figures in Bahrain, UAE, and Oman. Although progress has been made in recent years, according to the latest annual report, it still remains difficult for an ambitious woman to attain a senior executive position in the GCC.
