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In NEWSROOMS across the world, there are certain stories which hold the public’s attention regardless of coming up every year with minor variations – student success, youth inventions, women in business – the themes vary. That’s even more true in a tight-knit community like Bahrain. Of these, stories pertaining to the success of women and youth always hit the mark. And Bahrain embraces the success of its women with pride, especially within the framework of the modern corporate workplace.
Having thrown open doors for women to work in any field and ensured access to the highest levels of education for them, there is a last-mile snag in tapping this huge potential and translating it into a meaningful platform to nurture diversity in the highest echelons of the corporate world – the powerful boardrooms. In Bahrain, the last survey of women as board directors showed that the statistic stood at a mere 5.9 per cent in 2022.
The number is dismal, to say the least, especially when Bahraini women have worked their way up to holding 49pc of the jobs in the kingdom – the second-largest female workforce in the GCC. There are flashes of light – like the BBK appointing an awe-inspiring seven Bahraini women as board members to the group’s various companies. However, closer examination will show that the circle of anointed women board members is a tight one and a clique that new members will find difficult to break into. There is considerable over-boarding – where one woman is on several different boards.
This leads to a lack of development of new talent and while men network and recommend other new men to boardroom posts, women face the problem of being chosen over and over for the same or similar roles. When asked if adopting mandatory participation of women in boardroom positions would not stimulate more women board members across the corporate world, most women directors talk about merit taking priority and not forcing the issue based on gender.
But that’s precisely what many countries are doing to break the infamous glass ceiling and proclaim their commitment towards the United Nation’s 5th Sustainable Development Goal of Gender Equality. In India, for example, the powerful Companies Act 2013 and the Securities Exchange Board of India Regulations 2015 incorporate the rule for the appointment of a woman board member. Now, whether women here support the cause or not, in October 2022, the CBB issued new provisions requiring women to be appointed to the boards of joint stock companies listed on the Bahrain Stock Exchange.
So, whether we like it or not the Wave is here. But what do women bring to the boardroom that is so valuable? A surprising finding was that women directors were consistently more prepared than men for board meetings, less shy about addressing knotty problems and also more invested in building consensus and thought more about other stakeholders, including employees and clients, than men did. They also thought less in terms of their gender when working than men did – men tend to obsess a bit over getting more men on board and undercutting the ‘female influence’ or only relating to their women board members in patriarchal roles of mentor or superior.
With Deputy King His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa recently calling for a global vision for Bahrain to aspire for, it’s time we recalibrated our boardrooms and brought in more women directors so that we can take advantage of the superb class of women in our Bahrain workforce.
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