WOMEN’S PATH TO THE BOARDROOM Accredited Chartered Manager (CMI), Eman Deabil, examines boardroom diversity in Bahrain It’s no secret that the business case for boardroom diversity has been examined carefully in numerous studies and publications by many global firms such as McKinsey & Company, Deloitte and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) – to name a few. In addition, it is clearly obvious that there are many women who dream of climbing up the ladder in the corporate world and reserving a seat in the boardroom, which is why they study, work extremely hard to widen their experience, progress in their higher degrees, pursue careers in a wide-spectrum of fields, juggle many balls and do their best to balance their work-life responsibilities. However, for any dream to materialise it has to start by ‘planting the seeds and watering the garden’, yet studying the ‘climate’ is also essential to make sure that the ‘seeds’ have the right ‘atmosphere’ to grow and prosper. Hence, I decided to scan the environment, conduct a study, and support it with facts and figures to see if the dream is possible! The study is based on a dataset covering a sample of 117 organisations in Bahrain with data compiled from the official websites of the sampled business organisations in the time period from December 9 to December 13, 2020 with the assumption that the information provided by these websites was accurate, up to date and reliable. Sector classifications were grouped into eleven different sectors. For each sector the percentage of women serving on the boards was calculated - the findings are shown in the table below: From the table above, we can conclude the following: · There is a total of 971 directorships, where 876 seats (90.2%) are covered by male directors, and 95 seats (9.8%) are attributed to women directors. · More than half (56.4% being 66 Boards out of the 117 sampled organisations) have no women representation (0%). · 68.5% of the organisations (a total of 37 out of 54) in the Financial Services sector have no women representation (0%). · Only 2 out of 117 organisations (1.7%) have more than 50% of women holding positions in the boardroom. Both are family-owned companies in which those ladies are part of the family: company X with 2 women out of 3 board members (67%), and company Y with 7 women out of 13 board members (54%). • But what does that mean? Do we have hope, as women, to be in the boardroom? • The answer to this question is ‘YES’ and ‘NO’. Sector No. of Organizations % of Total No. of Organizations Total No. of Directors No. of Men Directors No. of Women Directors % of Board Seats Held by Women Aviation/Airlines Services 4 3% 31 31 0 0% Education 11 9% 103 82 21 20% Family/Group/Holding 17 15% 132 115 17 13% Financial Services 54 46% 433 405 28 6% Government/Public Sector 9 8% 100 84 16 16% Health Services 2 2% 19 15 4 21% Hotels and Tourism 4 3% 33 32 1 3% Industrial/Manufacturing 5 4% 46 42 4 9% Energy and Resources 3 3% 14 14 0 0% Telecommunications 2 2% 14 13 1 7% Other Services 6 5% 46 43 3 7% Totals 117 100% 971 876 95 9.8% (Part 1 of 2) February 2021 www.womanthismonth.com 50 OPINION
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