Business | Features
Challenging the gender factor
Woman entrepreneurs in the region face a lot more obstacles than men when setting up businesses. But the key is to get over the initial barriers
- By Andrew England, Financial Times
- Published: 15:02 June 18, 2007
- Woman entrepreneurs in the region face a lot more obstacles than men when setting up businesses. But the key is to get over the initial barriers.
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For some women it is the bureaucratic barriers that have to be tackled when they attempt to get licences or register companies in male-dominated business sectors.
For others it is the challenge of overcoming perceptions and having to work that much harder to be accepted. And for all there is the problem of networking - how to compete with men who are able to thrash out deals and talk contracts in coffee shops and at diwans and other social events from which women are often excluded. Setting up a business in the Middle East is a tough exercise for both sexes because of cumbersome bureaucracies, the high level of start-up capital required and poorly functioning judiciaries and regulatory frameworks. But for women operating in traditionally conservative societies the challenges can be exacerbated by age-old discrimination and prejudices.
Huda Janahi, chief executive of Global Cargo and Travellers' Services, provides an example of the difficulties that women can face. She set up her company in Bahrain in 2001 and wanted to get licences to handle cargo and have customs clearance.
It was not an easy task. "The first time when I went to register my company they said: 'You are a woman, you should not have this registration [licences],'" she says.
There was no law preventing a woman having the licences, it was simply that a businesswoman had not applied before, she says. It took about a year to finally get approval. How long would it have taken a man? "Normally? One month," she estimates.
Yet despite the hurdles, Janahi is also proof of the success businesswomen can attain. Today, she runs three companies, is the recipient of business awards and has an investor looking to spend $3 million for a stake in two of her operations, she says.
And there are many other examples of successful businesswomen throughout the region.
The key is getting over the initial barriers, says Nadereh Chamlou, a senior adviser at the World Bank. "In the Middle East, surprisingly, we have a large number of women entrepreneurs, which defies perception," she says.
"What is happening is you have businesswomen in the very large sectors, so the issue is once they make it over the entry barriers they are able to compete and move up the ladder. The problem is getting started and standing on your feet."
She says the main barriers for women seeking to start-up companies are: access to capital; the lack of networks for women to mingle with other business people and potential clients; and the challenges of juggling running a family with managing a business.
Saudi entrepreneurship
In Saudi Arabia, the environment for female entrepreneurs is harsher than most. Women in the kingdom are prevented from driving and many aspects of their lives are subject to male-female segregation.
Women still need male "guardians" to do the rounds of ministries and government departments, to collect the documents required to register a business and apply for the necessary licences, says Nashwa Taher, vice president of the Khadijah Bint Khowailed Centre set up at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce to support businesswomen.
Access to credit is another problem, with women forced to use a man - husband or father - to act as guarantors for loans.
"It [business] is difficult, but ladies are doing it anyway," says Taher, who runs a restaurant and catering business with her husband, importing gourmet food from Italy.
"There are obstacles because nobody has touched these obstacles before, nobody talked about it." She says the situation is improving, citing the election and appointment of women to the chamber of commerce's board in 2005 as an example of changing attitudes.
She also says the government has realised the need to promote women's roles in business and developing the economy.
But more needs to be done. "We wanted everyone, all the Saudi citizens, to understand that there is a difference between traditions and religion. Religion has never banned women from working," Taher says. "Of course, we know we have a lot of people who are against women working; this is a very big challenge."
Nadia Bakhurji, who runs Riwaq of the Kingdom, a Riyadh-based architectural company, describes getting finance as a "nightmare", adding that being a woman in a field that is dominated by men adds pressure.
"You have got to be twice as good, 10 times better, and if you flop, you flop big-time," she says. But it can also have its advantages - being unique, having a niche and working for female clients who do not want to deal with men.
Last year, she became the first woman elected to the Saudi council of engineers. Still it can be a struggle.
"I hate to admit this, but I think with the amount of energy and time and effort I've put into my business, if I had been a man in the same circumstances I think I would have been far more financially successful," Bakhurji says.
"I would have been more mobile within the community, I would have been able to network better."
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