In the UAE, it’s not just women themselves who would like to see more females climbing to the top of the career ladder. Plenty of men are of that opinion too. After all, putting women in top positions makes good business sense.
Rachid Ouenniche, 51, from Morocco, has taken an assertive stance as managing director of Cummins Middle East to recruit more women.
During his five-year tenure in the Middle East for the company – one of the world’s largest engine manufacturers in a traditionally male-dominated sector – the ratio of female employees in the region has increased by 10 to 22 per cent.
Mr Ouenniche played a personal role in enabling that shift, running an internship programme in collaboration with the University of Sharjah as well as universities in Jeddah, Beirut, Qatar and Afghanistan, to find the next generation of potential leaders for the company, which has its regional base in Jebel Ali.
“This past year we had 18 interns, 16 of whom were women”, he says. “I talk to them, and I ensure that their mentors, sponsors and managers know how important this is. Personal engagement and involvement in senior leadership is essential, because these are our future leaders. If we take a long view, and focus on the pipeline, it tells us we will be more successful as a business.”
According to a 2014 report on women in leadership by McKinsey and Company, companies with three or more women in senior management functions are more effective organisationally, and result in a leadership team with greater diversity of perspectives and ideas to capture. Yet although more women graduating from colleges than men in the GCC, they make up only 27 per cent of the workforce.
“I see that as a lost opportunity for businesses, because there is so much talent out there that we’re not tapping into,” says Mr Ouenniche.
While he is managing to change the numbers in his company, what of business cultures in the region where male dominance is more ingrained?
One of the most vocal regional male champions of female empowerment is Saudi entrepreneur Khalid AlKhudair, 32, the chief executive of Glowork, which he founded in 2011 to match women in Saudi Arabia with jobs by creating opportunities for them in sectors previously off limits.
“Women do not need men to stand up for them, they need men to stand beside women,” he says. “In the kingdom, four years ago when we first started, we had to create understanding that there is a difference between religion and tradition.”
When Glowork tried putting women to work in a supermarket chain, it was the first time Saudi women had worked in a public space outside of hospitals. “The public was not very happy with that, and we had to let go of those women,” he says. But rather than give up, Mr AlKhudair conducted focus groups to find out why local companies were reluctant to hire women. “We were told that the segregation law was putting them off,” he says. “You had to have separate male and female buildings, which costs a lot of money.”
Then he looked at the unemployment data. Fifty per cent of those who were unemployed were living in rural areas, where opportunities for women were few and far between. Glowork created a system to allow women to work virtually, so instead of outsourcing to call centres abroad, they outsourced to women’s homes. However, Mr Alkhudair doesn’t see it as the long-term solution.
“Our vision is not that we want women to work from home,” he asserts. “But once a lady is working from home, she is communicating with men – be it by email or phone.
She and her family see what she is capable of. Within a year or two, the mindset of the families will change to ‘hey you need to start going out and working’. We’re starting to see that happening.”
Women in Saudi Arabia are also now able to work in supermarkets – “so that spark four years ago did something”, he adds.
Another man not afraid to promote the other gender is Tarek Rabah, area vice president MEA for AstraZeneca, based in Dubai Healthcare City. Mr Rabah was awarded the “Male Champion of Change” at the 2015 Women in Leadership Forum, held in Abu Dhabi.
“You need commitment as a leadership team on the changes you want to happen, and then you hold yourself accountable in front of the leadership team, and review the progress every three months,” says Mr Rabah, 44, from Lebanon. “That’s the spirit of ownership you need for change to happen.”
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