50 March 2021 www.bahrainthismonth.com interview If you’ve read my last article which appeared in the February issue of Woman This Month, let’s pick up where we left off - with the million-dollar question: What does it take to get to the boardroom? The answer to this question might not be straightforward as there is no predefined checklist or criteria to make a woman qualified for a seat in the boardroom. Different industries, organizations and countries might require different criteria, simply put - no one size fits all. Realistically speaking, in some societies, your family name, connections, nationality, colour and ethnicity matter more than your knowledge, experience and qualities. However, at least from a gender perspective, if we look at the figures shared in the previous part, your chances to become a board member are higher by around 90% if you are a man – but that comes at a cost! According to the report published by the World Bank Group in 2018 titled “The Cost of Gender Inequality, Unrealized Potential: The High Cost of Gender Inequality in Earnings” women account for only 38% of human capital wealth versus 62% for men globally. It’s a third or less in low and lower-middle income countries. As said by the CEO of Trust Re and a Board Member in a number of organizations, Talal Al-Zain: “The cost of not engaging half (or more) of the population in decision making at all levels is massive. It’s an opportunity loss on the national economy front. Empowering competent contributors who formulates large portions of our population is key to achieving Vision 2030.” Now let’s look at the 95 women in our sampled organizations who made it to the boardroom and try to analyze their profiles, this might give us a clue as to what the criteria could be to pave the path to the boardroom. First, to be precise, we have only 82 unique profiles for women in our dataset, several women have a presence in several boards WOMEN’S PATH TO THE BOARDROOM Accredited Chartered Manager (CMI), Eman Deabil, gives us valuable insights into how to get to the boardroom. (Part 2 of 2)
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