Mentoring a new Boardroom

By Captain Mahmood Al Mahmood  

Did you know that training and empowering women to take their decision-making places across boardrooms in the MENA region is an active business programme?

That even stock exchanges such as the Bahrain Bourse has embraced the challenge so that it can support what it calls a ‘healthy pipeline of highly qualified talent who are mentored to be ‘board-ready’.

The belief is being confirmed that having an inclusive and diverse representation on your team of people who are from different cultural backgrounds, nationalities and gender  helps to strengthen the output, bring new ideas to the table and foster economic competitiveness and better corporate governance.

Empowering women is also a key target of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Bahrain Bourse signed a commitment announced its commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) initiative in 2019 itself.

This includes the Women Empowerment Principles (WEP) to further promote gender equality in the workplace.

Bahrain, like the GCC countries, which depend on expat workforce to a great extent, is uniquely positioned to implement this concept and Bahraini women with their drive, education and successful track record make this very achievable.

Still, we do need more enthusiasm from the private sector.

Why just tick the government approved box for women when you stand to gain so much by going the extra mile and really include women in your success story?

The old excuses of women executives leaving to have babies or having to reorganise the restrooms to accommodate women directors is no longer valid.

Men leave too, for better prospects and women are often twice as productive.

As investors and consumers, we need to raise our voices too and demand equal opportunities for our working sisters.