A year after examining women’s role in the boardroom, Accredited Chartered Manager (CMI), Eman Deabil, does a comprehensive study on the number of women in executive management roles in Bahrain.
Last year, I conducted a study to examine women’s representation in the boardroom for a sample of 117 organisations in Bahrain. After a year, it’s worth mentioning that when looking at the boards of the same sample, the overall women representation has increased from 9.8 percent last year to 11 percent this year for two main reasons:
- Women representation in boardrooms has increased for some organisations as a result of the actual increase in the number of women joining the boardrooms; 12 more women have booked their seats in the boardroom, congratulations!
- The total number of board members decreased in some organisations, while women representation stayed the same. This contributes to increasing women representation percentage.
- This year, the same sample was used yet again to examine women representation in executive management roles. However, given that the executive management team was not published on some organisations’ websites, only 86 organisations were examined. Another limitation in this study was that in some instances, there was no clear distinction between executive management, senior management or even management team, while on some websites they were not differentiated. This makes it difficult to draw concrete conclusions especially with the different types and sizes of organisations.
- Now by looking at the data available for the 86 organisations and the area under study this time (i.e., women in executive/senior management) the following was noticed:
- Total management roles were 869, out of which 695 were reserved for men (80 percent), whereas 177 were for women (20 percent).
- 25 organisations out of the 86 have no women representation. Reached between 50 percent and 67 percent in six organisations.
- 12 organisations (14 percent) were led by women holding the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO)/General Manager/President. Of these, five were educational institutions and seven were financial institutions.
- At least 17 out of the 177 women hold doctorate degrees, 16 of which are serving educational institutions.
- Consistency cannot be established around levels and grades across the 86 organisations given the different types of industries examined and the varying designs, sizes and grading structures leveraged in each organisation. However, the following was observed:
- Out of the 177 women holding managerial roles, 24 were chiefs (14 percent), 65 were heads/deans (37 percent), 43 were directors/VPs/principal (24 percent), 23 were managers/senior managers/assistant managers (13 percent).
- By looking at the area of expertise of the 177 women, it’s noticed that at least 31 are in human capital and admin. In other words, 31 organisations out of the 86 (36 percent) trust women to manage HR matters. 22 are in risk, legal and compliance, ten are in strategy and project management, nine are in corporate communications and marketing, and seven are in finance.
Despite the important gains achieved over the past few years, women are still underrepresented at board level as well as executive and senior management levels. To reduce this gap and drive sustainable progress for all women, McKinsey & Company in its report ‘Women in the Workplace’ published in September 2021 suggested the following:
- Companies need to take action to address a systemic weak point in the corporate pipeline: the ‘broken rung’ in promotions at the first step up to manager;
- Companies need to track representation, as well as hiring and promotion outcomes; they may need to fine-tune their hiring and promotion processes; and
- Ensure that all women are getting the mentorship, sponsorship, and professional development needed to advance.
Having said that, Bahrain has come a long way to empower women and ensure gender diversity and equality at different fronts. A recent example is the clause that was added to the Article (39) of Law 36/2012 earlier this year that says: “Discrimination in the wages between male and female workers in jobs of the same value shall be prohibited.”
Another example is the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) Reporting Guide that was issued by Bahrain Bourse to assist listed companies to drive sustainable development and ensure gender diversity and equality by tracking and reporting the following metrics:
- Under Social category – Gender Pay Ratio and Gender Diversity
- Under Governance category – Board Diversity
The reporting requirement will hold leaders accountable for the progress on gender diversity and equality. Yet this could be a double-edged sword if not taken seriously and cautiously; especially when equality comprises quality by hiring and/or promoting more women merely to increase the number and eventually meet the target and turning a blind eye to the quality of the other candidates who could be best-fit for the role; it’s when ‘gender’ becomes the only competitive advantage – which might be unfortunately the case in some instances!
