#BreakTheBias to boost women’s participation in the MENA workforce beyond one in five employees

Women’s workforce participation in the MENA region is at 20 percent, compared to the global average of 47 percent, and to the 72 percent of men who are active in the job market.

Overcoming these challenges through strategies that would increase women’s participation and retention in the workforce was the topic addressed in a panel organised by She is Arab, a dedicated speakers’ platform for Arab women, and Accenture, a multinational consulting company.

The panel brought together representatives from tech, consulting and communications to shed light on a diversity of viewpoints. Moderated by Samar Al Shorafa, founding CEO, She is Arab, the panel included co-founder and CEO of Whyise, and founding partner of Kaamen, Reem Khouri; recruiting associate manager, Accenture Middle East BV, Omar Baghoum; and Rachel Dunn, communications director, Microsoft MEA, and the chair of Global Women in PR MENA.

Starting off from this year’s theme for IWD, #breakthebias, can you shed some light on what bias is?

RK: One of the biggest challenges we have with clients is that when we tell them they need to measure bias to know if it exists, they immediately tell us they don’t have a policy that differentiates between men and women so there is no need to measure anything, and that’s how you know they don’t even understand what bias is.

There are biases is at every level of the workforce: during training, at management or even entry level, the speed at which you get promoted, women representation on the board, the pay gap etc.

There’s also the biases that start at a much earlier level like in schools where girls are told they will get married or not to ask too many questions.

In the start-up ecosystem, one of the biggest biases exists with investors where female founders get much less investment than male founders and they get asked very different questions when they’re presenting and pitching their ideas, and so it’s everywhere. We just need to start measuring.

Climbing the corporate ladder is obviously a major challenge women face that needs to be addressed. Would you like to share your reflections on that?

RD: We recently did some training on unconscious bias in Microsoft. It’s very easy for us to almost be a bit scared of bias but it is the way our brain processes information and makes decisions so it is not something that we should always be sort of ashamed off.

We all have biases but knowing this isn’t enough. It’s about being able to identify those biases, and be really aware of them, and then be able to put things in place to mitigate them. Some organisations, have a lot of focus on unconscious bias training – or being able to identify the different biases and put policies in place to mitigate them – and in other organisations, it’s just not considered.

Coming from the communications industry, which is a female dominated ironically, the biggest bias that we’re facing is around making it to leadership positions. It often comes down to things like a lack of flexible working practices. In a recent research we did as Global Women in PR, over half the respondents said that they believed fathers were promoted quicker than mothers.

Could you elaborate on this?

RD: There isn’t one particular barrier as its quite complex, depending on the individual, but I think there’s a couple of things.

One of the things that stood out from our research, as Global Women in PR, is that three quarters of the women who were surveyed felt that a lack of family-friendly policies, or a lack of flexible working practices, were what was really preventing them from getting to senior leadership positions. And this is in a female dominated industry, with women accounting for 71 percent of employees in the Middle East’s PR industry.

And we even did this research in the second half of last year, during Covid-19 time, when there was a lot of positive takeaway around flexible working practices, so it is a shame that this is still an issue.

Also, for many women, especially during the pandemic, mental health was an issue where they had to juggle a lot of responsibilities and a third of our respondents said they were just not offered mental health support by their organisations which is another missed opportunity.

How can we build an enabling environment to allow women to thrive? Who is responsible?

RK: The short answer is everyone is responsible. It’s not about one policy, or one process.

It’s the policies, processes and every single employee, from management to entry level, who needs to unlearn what we knew and learn the new way to do it. It really takes a village.

RD: If we want to create this enabling environment for women at work, everybody has a responsibility, right down through to the education system, raising children, and the workforce.

From a workforce perspective, it has to be embedded in the company culture and managers have an important role to play here. We talk about this idea of role modelling which is absolutely crucial for women to continue to progress in their careers. But also having a company culture where you feel safe calling out biases when you see examples of it and speaking up is very, very important.

I love how you said that awareness is key, but awareness is not enough. Omar would you give us your input on bias?

OB: Every human being has a bias and it comes from the way they’ve been raised and often you cannot control it but it’s very important to identify it and be aware of it.

From an Accenture’s perspective, we took it one step further. Aside from the non-bias training we provide all our employees who join the company, we’ve created a similar training, but for interviewers, and hiring managers, anyone who is involved in an interview.

The essence of that training is to be aware of your bias, how to eliminate that bias, and how to navigate and evaluate talent, regardless of race, gender, and background of that person you’re interviewing, and providing an equal way of evaluation to all the talents coming in to ensure having the best talents coming into Accenture.

Something that requires a bit more awareness raising, especially in our parts of the world,  and that I am very passionate about is that we need to localise any approach we take. Do you have any reflections on that?

OB: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. One of the mistakes that a lot of companies do is they copy other companies when something works for them but that’s wrong.

Because when it comes to a very personable topic, there is no one size fits all. You have to listen to your population, see what they want.