LONDON, 7 October 2004 — Arab women in business are on the march with the national, regional and international corporate sector playing an increasing role as drivers of change and facilitators in empowering women to make their fair contribution to the development of their country’s economy and society.
Shell Dubai, for instance, sponsored the Emirates Businesswomen Awards earlier this year. This Sunday too, Bahrain-based TAIB Bank is sponsoring a seminar on women in business as part of its Silver Jubilee celebrations.
The increasing focus of women in business is timely, given that many regard them as an under-represented and still restricted constituency. More and more businesswomen, including those from Saudi Arabia, are now participating in international business conferences both as delegates and sometimes as speakers. This would have been unheard of only a year or two ago.
“Arab women are a formidable force in Gulf business and currently control some 38 percent of the wealth in the region. Women are continuing to gain ground as major players and contributors to GCC economies, stresses Iqbal Mamdani, vice chairman of TAIB.
This may be so, but statistics can often be both beguiling and skewed. Most of the wealth owned by women in the GCC, for instance, is inherited wealth. The empowerment of women in business, politics, education, health care — in society in general — at best is erratic and at worst nonexistent. Progress and reforms in this respect are not systemic nor sustained — often at the whim of a leader following pressure from his spouse or consort; or because of socio-economic necessity. For instance, the training of women teachers to teach girls.
Yes we have the exceptions — Dr. Shaikha Al-Maskati, chairwoman of the Tricon Group in Abu Dhabi; Dr. Nehad Taher, senior economist, National Commercial Bank in Saudi Arabia; Afnan Rashid Al-Zayani, president of Al-Zayani Commercial Services in Bahrain; and Elham Hassan, senior partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Bahrain.
But contrast women in the GCC, say with their counterparts in Malaysia. Last week in London, I met one of the distinguished Muslim woman technocrats and politicians of her generation, Rafidah Aziz, the Malaysian minister for international trade & industry. She has been spearheading the country’s impressive drive toward industrialization under its 2020 Vision and its international trade and investment effort since 1987. Before that she was minister of public enterprises.
Last Friday, she was the Cabinet minister sitting beside her Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi selling Malaysia Inc. to British business as an outstanding profit center for investment and trade especially in the country’s aspiring “knowledge-based economy”, with a command of her brief, whether on regulations, policies, intellectual property etc, which many of her male colleagues can only smart over.
Rafidah Aziz, who is known for her forthright approach and her ability to get things done, is no exception. There are more than five ministers of varying ranks in the new Badawi government.
Another powerful female technocrat is Dr. Zeti Akhtar Aziz, governor of Bank Negara (the central bank of Malaysia), voted “International Central Banker of the Year” in 2003 by The Banker, a Financial Times publication. She is highly respected internationally and often sits with her G-7 counterparts at special sessions at international meetings; the World Bank/IMF meetings; and at the Basel Committee meetings. No other central banker from a Muslim country — man or woman — has achieved the reputation, which Zeti currently has.
The Director General of LOFSA (the Labuan Offshore Financial Authority), the regulator of Malaysia’s offshore banking center, is Rosnah Omar, another achieving woman. There are women who run ratings agencies, big business, state utilities and banks.
Many of the above women in Malaysia sit at the top table unhindered by this or that controversy or constraint. They are there because they are achievers in a country and society, which encourages and facilitates the opportunities to such achievement as part of the political and developmental process. In other words, this is their God-given birthright to have access to opportunities to realize their human potential and dignity both as Muslims and as citizens. Less complacency creeps in, the gap between women in business in Malaysia and say women in business in the Arab world is huge. The accessibility, empowering, enabling, societal, education, and legal facilitating culture and environment is also hugely different.
Badawi, as an alim well-versed in the rubrics of his faith, supports an equal and open role for Malaysian women in society — whether in politics, business, work, the media, and at home. Yet even Malaysia has its work cut out. For instance, can the dominant party, UMNO (United Malays National Organization), in the ruling National Front coalition, ever countenance a woman being prime minister of Malaysia one day?
Contrast this once again with a recent e-mail I got from Fatima (not her real name) who lives with her parents in Jeddah. At the end of 2003 she successfully completed her MBA at a University in London in the UK. Her Masters thesis was on Islamic Equity Funds and an analysis of their performances and whether they contributed any added value to the economies of the domicile of their investors.
Since graduating, Fatima has found it almost impossible to get a job in banking in Saudi Arabia. She is particularly keen on getting a job with an Islamic bank or window. Several local banks told her that they simply do not have any positions for women in banking in the Kingdom. Fatima is once again far from being the exception, and her plight is a microcosm of the problems many professionally aspiring women encounter in the GCC today.
They are very often more highly educated and achieving than their male counterparts, but their access to real jobs which we in the West or the women in Malaysia would take for granted, is severely restricted. True Malaysia has a jobless rate of only 3.5 percent, which in economic parlance is regarded as “full employment”.
These are the women at the front line of the employment crisis which the Gulf economies are faced with. With adult male unemployment rising in the region, women are still a secondary priority. Until and unless this core mindset is changed, many women unfortunately and through no fault of their own, will remain largely confined as second-class citizens in the work force or as the disenfranchised “hidden unemployed”.
Not to overlook the attempts by the various women’s business forums and committees that have emerged in recent years in Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Kuwait and so on, these efforts should be proactively supported. But issues relating to employment opportunities, challenges and obstacles, equality, the role of education and support services for women, can only be addressed realistically if they are also acknowledged by the governments and enshrined in law.
Qatar seems to be ahead of the other GCC states, with over 4,000 Qatari women involved in business, according to Secretary-General of the Qatar Businesswomen Forum, Ibhetag Mohamed Al-Ahmadani. However, the Forum is a charity as opposed to an industry association. “We would like women to get more involved in business in Qatar. We would also like to seem women reaching higher positions within business,” stressed Mrs. Al-Ahmadani at the annual “Women in Business” conference in London in May.
At the same conference, Christine McCafferty British member of Parliament, and Parliamentary Patron of Women in Business International, declared that “women in the Arab world are contributing very positively to their national economies and are capable of contributing more,” albeit that this role is still evolving.
She lauded the UAE for instance for establishing a national strategy for the advancement of women. In Saudi Arabia too, women are now given official encouragement to enter business, albeit own or women-only businesses, and the first-ever female advisors have been appointed to the Shoura Council in the Kingdom.
