Dubai: The role of women in the workplace still needs to be clearly defined in the Middle East to address the lack of women in management positions, experts say.
Dr Sven-Olaf Vathje of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), who completed a recent study into gender diversity in the workplace, has highlighted an “Achilles Heel” among leading companies on the issue.
And he believes the UAE could play a leading global role in greater integration of women as statistics show that young Emirati women are better educated than their male peers and often demonstrate stronger work ethic.
He said: “GCC countries like the UAE could play a leading global role in the full integration of women in the workplace. Also, unlike their Western peers, Emirati women typically marry and have children early in their lives so they could rejoin the workforce as management talent without a further family break, given the strong domestic support system in most GCC countries.
“It is BCG’s experience that companies that successfully advance qualified women into leadership positions benefit from an overall increased attractiveness as an employer. Also, such companies typically outperform their industry peers — diversity pays off commercially,” Vathje said.
The recent BCG study shows that 85 per cent of leading organisations view gender diversity as a top priority yet only one in five companies have targeted recruiting strategies for female talent.
The BCG surveyed some 100 human resources managers in 44 international companies for its study, ‘Shattering the Glass Ceiling: An Analytical Approach to Advancing Women into Leadership Roles.’ The companies surveyed include Adidas, BMW, Qantas, Cisco and American Express.
The study highlights the major institutional and personal barriers preventing women from achieving leadership positions, the best-practice examples, and presents a systematic approach to promoting women in management.
Dr Vathje, who is a partner and managing director in BCG’s Abu Dhabi office, said: “In the Middle East, the role of women in the workforce has not been clearly defined yet. This is surprising in light of government ambitions to further nationalise the work force.”
He added that the scarcity of leadership talent can only be resolved by fully tapping into the female talent pool.
“It’s not about random percentages or yet another diversity training programme,” Vathje explained. “It’s about getting a complete grip on how an organisation recruits, retains, and promotes its diverse talent so it can identify its Achilles’ heel in terms of gender diversity.”
The study also shows that most executives see a connection between diversity and corporate success.
However, only 35 per cent of the companies analysed included diversity in their managers’ target agreements, and only one in five offered managers financial incentives for achieving diversity targets.
In many GCC countries, basic measures like women’s networks, mentorship programmes, or diversity training for managers — that are catching on in more mature markets — are deficient.
Even in countries where such initiatives are being promoted, such as in the UAE, these measures alone will not turn gender diversity into a competitive advantage, the study indicated.
The greatest challenge for organisations lies not in a lack of awareness about the diversity topic, but rather in an inability to appropriately identify a company’s own glass ceiling,
Vathje explained. “The lack of women in leadership positions is primarily a problem of internal talent management, women receive considerably fewer promotions.”
