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Mar 2024

Women in insurance: Glass ceiling chipped, not yet broken

Source: Middle East Insurance Review | Mar 2015

Women have made great strides breaking into the executive ranks, but are still under-represented at senior management and board positions of many insurers in the Middle East. In fact, there is only one female CEO out of 88 GCC-listed insurance entities, proving that the proverbial glass ceiling remains very much intact. 
 By Cynthia Ang
 
Arab women have made considerable progress in the workplace in recent years, attaining high-level positions in both public- and private-sector organisations. But despite the progress, there is continued under-representation of women in positions of power and leadership. This is evident in the boards and management teams of insurers which tend to be predominantly male. 
 
In MEIR’s analysis of publicly available data of insurers listed on the GCC stock exchanges, there is currently only one female CEO out of 88 insurers. Overall, women hold just 26% of senior and managerial positions, while only 11% of directors on these listed companies are women. 
 
With four out of five companies having women in senior roles and/or board positions, Oman has the highest share of women in top management among the seven stock exchanges, while the five Qatari listed insurers have no female in board or senior leadership roles.
 
Ms Sayyida Rawan Ahmed Al Said, Managing Director and CEO as well as a board member of Takaful Oman Insurance, also has the distinction of being the only woman CEO in a listed company in Oman. In North Africa, Mrs Lamia Ben Mahmoud, Chairman and CEO of Tunis Re, was the first Tunisian woman to achieve such a rank when she took on the role in 2009. Mrs Ben Mahmoud is also the first female member of the MENA Insurance CEO Club (MICC).
 
Fighting challenges 
While these achievements are encouraging, more efforts are needed to break through the class ceiling and advance women to senior leadership positions in the region. 
 
“We have come a long way since the 1980s with respect to gender equality, but the gap isn’t completely closed,” said Mrs Yolla El Khoury, Group Vice President of Bahrain-based ACE Holding. Women working in the financial industry continue to fight challenges that affect their professional development, while little preparation is provided by the insurance organisations for women to advance, she added. 
 
Mrs El Khoury continued: “We know that male-dominated senior management teams set the tone for their organisations and often determine who gets promoted and who does not; they tend to select protégés resembling themselves. Such unconscious biases have a tendency to undermine the success of women, challenge the effectiveness of their leadership, and diminish their ability to receive objective performance evaluations, promotions and compensation packages that are equitable to men.”
 
Ms Rana Ghandour Salhab, Talent and Communications Partner at Deloitte Middle East, said that working in a predominantly male environment at the leadership level is a challenge in itself. “The expectations seem to be to either fit the mould, built on mostly male-related attributes, or risk being an anomaly with the repercussions that come with this, namely the pervasive influence of unconscious bias,” she added.
 
Unique obstacles 
In addition to a male-dominated culture, Ms Evren Sandikci of AIG in Turkey said the absence of women at senior management levels is also due to work structure. While many of the difficulties of business are the same for men and women, she said that “women face unique obstacles, including sexual stereotypes, alienation in a masculine work environment, and child-bearing concerns. Businesswomen are increasingly knocking down barriers to advancement, but they are also leaving the work place, dissatisfied by what they have to sacrifice to achieve success – or by what success brings when they reach the top”. 
 
Voicing the same sentiments, Ms Salhab said that along women’s career path and more so when they reach leadership positions, they are faced with decisions that will be more impacted by non-work priorities than men do, such as building families, having children, and caring for parents. She advised: “A woman leader needs to resist the pressure and the urge to be a super leader, super mom, super spouse, and a super daughter, just to name some expectations. She has to be comfortable with her career choices and shape her life and not only her career accordingly.” 
 
Ms Solveig Nicklos, Director of Bahrain Institute of Banking and Finance (BIBF), said: “Occupying a position of power as a woman is not about emulating a man, it is about trusting your instincts, knowing who you are and being true to that.
 
“Women have an unfortunate habit of assuming that if they are good at a particular thing, then so is everyone else. That is simply not true. People management, for example, is a skill that is vital in a leadership role and one that women have historically excelled at. Eighty five per cent of my job as CEO is people management; keeping the team motivated, providing opportunities for growth and development, succession planning, etc. People respect authenticity, and as a leader it is your responsibility to find your true worth, recognising what you do well and capitalising on that.”
 
Case for more female leaders
Globally, while women may have made inroads into the top leadership positions in the corporate world, the progress has not been particularly impressive. For example, women make up 5% of CEOs in Fortune 500 companies and 17% of corporate board members among these companies. This is despite data from various research reports showing a more balanced representation of women in top leadership positions is good for business and can lead to better financial growth. 
 
Agreeing, Ms Salhab said there is a strong business case for having more women on the leadership platforms, noting that diverse and balanced teams improve an organisation’s bottom line. She said: “Inclusive environments drive stronger performance and sustainable business benefits. In fact, companies with more women on their boards were found to outperform their rivals with a 42% higher return in sales, 66% higher return on invested capital, and 53% higher return on equity. 
 
“Despite this, and the presence of highly qualified and experienced women in the market and within companies, a glass ceiling is still very much present, which translates into a low percentage of women board members and senior leaders.
There needs to be more focus on changing perceptions, tackling stereotyping through awareness, learning and role modelling, in addition to adopt laws that support gender diversity and introducing policies that allow women to advance their careers while managing their demanding family roles.”
 
Need for role models and mentors
Research has also highlighted the importance of providing younger women with role models and mentors. 
 
While mentoring plays a big role in developing any career, Ms El Khoury said “it is important to distinguish what kinds of efforts are most useful at different stages of career development. At different points in a person’s career, they need different types of mentoring. The needs for mentoring change from student years, to the first years out of school, to mid-career, to the most senior career positions”.
 
Capable and ambitious young women see few role models who validate the rewards of persevering towards senior roles, Ms Sandikci said, pointing out that “women’s initiatives help counter these conditions and help women develop skills, strategies, clients, and power base to rise in business and the profession. They create a sense of community and mutual support that make women feel committed to each other and to the firm”. 
 
However, Ms Nicklos said that people generally tend to confuse the role of a mentor with that of a champion. She explained: “A mentor’s responsibility is to help with professional development, identify areas of improvement, and enhance specific skills. A champion, on the other hand, is someone who has faith in their abilities, is willing to act as an advocate, and more importantly, has access to executive management.”
 
Ms Nicklos observed that women are quite comfortable letting their work speak for them and have a harder time with self-promotion, adding that “while quality of work is important, it may not be the deciding factor when you are competing against someone who does have an internal champion”. She said: “My advice is to try and cultivate that kind of relationship, especially for those who work in large organisations and have limited access to the decision-making table.”
 
Promising initiatives
In recent years, there have been increased efforts by government and other organisations to encourage and facilitate the participation of women in the workforce and society. In a landmark move, the UAE in 2012 passed a ruling that mandated the presence of females in boardrooms of government agencies. The UAE is reportedly planning to take this ruling a step further, with a regulation to place a woman on the board of every publicly listed government firm under consideration. 
 
Ms Nicklos said: “It is very exciting to see that the government is focussing on the empowerment of women, because pragmatically, governments and organisations that don’t, lose out on 50% of the population. Women-run businesses are diverse and are an excellent means of fostering employment, and increasing economic growth and productivity, especially as we seek to move away from a focus on oil and gas.” 
 
Ms Sandikci said it is encouraging to see initiatives promoting women’s empowerment in the Middle East, such as Women in Leadership forums held every year in the UAE and other countries in the region, funded and supported by the government. She shared that AIG is also investing in the Women & Allies Employee Resource Group (ERG), inaugurated to provide opportunities for the educational and professional development of AIG’s women employees. The Women & Allies ERG helps members use their ambition, energy and creativity to enhance AIG’s position and profitability in the marketplace and brand recognition in the community.
 
More can be done
Ms Salhab, however, views the government initiatives as “promising but not sufficient”. While the governments have made strides to encourage more inclusivity through initiatives, “progress is part of an ongoing journey that involves steady changes, education and action. The public sector could serve as a model for the private sector”.
 
“It is important for governments to understand that parity is not going to happen naturally even with well-meaning programmes as otherwise there would have been more success stories at the country and corporate levels in developed countries. Strategies that set quotas, targets and other affirmative policies are essential and the only way to reach critical mass is through affirmative policies,” she added.
 
Giving a different perspective, Ms Nicklos said: “I’m not a big fan of hiring quotas, but I strongly believe in interviewing quotas. If a firm does not have a diverse interviewing pool, then by definition the hiring pool will be homogenous.” She added that the insurance industry would benefit from working closely with institutions of higher learning to ensure that programmes are career-path oriented and supply graduates with the skills required to serve the industry.
 
Mrs El Khoury said governments in the Middle East still need to accomplish a lot to improve the situation of women in business in the region, such as setting up a joint government-civil society national consultative committee to help women across the region become economically empowered. In addition, a national strategy to combat violence against women should be adopted by governments in cooperation with the MENA countries and other international partners. She also suggested establishing a mechanism to coordinate at a national level each country’s civil society and government programmes for building women’s political capacity.
 
In a report that looks at how to advance women’s role in GCC family businesses, Strategy&, which is part of the PwC network, said women have outnumbered men in percentage of graduates in higher education across the GCC countries, and they are beginning to venture into fields traditionally dominated by men. The report said: “Governments can take these educational trends a step further by sponsoring and promoting training courses for women on topics such as financial literacy and ‘how to be a board member’, which will inform them on their roles, responsibilities, and the corporate expectations of their performance.”
 
Push towards empowerment 
While women in leadership positions are still rare in the Middle East, the region’s growing wealth, rising education standards for women, and government and corporate efforts to promote more equal opportunities should help women break the glass ceiling.
 
In addition to receiving external support, it is also important for women to take charge of their careers with confidence, reinvent themselves, and draw on their inner strengths to achieve their objectives in life.
 
As Sheikha Bodour Bint Sultan Al Qasimi, Chairperson of the Sharjah Investment and Development Authority (Shurooq) and CEO of Kalimat Group, said during her speech at the Women in Leadership Economic Forum 2014 in Dubai: “It is clear that a lot has been achieved and considerable ground has been covered. It is however also evident that much remains to be achieved in creating the right conditions for women to thrive in business in many parts of the world. If we want to create real lasting change, we need to encourage women to take charge of their own empowerment. This is the only way for us to move ahead, and turn opportunities…into tangible benefits.”

 

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