Webinar Workshop | Making the Business Case for Diversity

Diversity in business leadership and organisational settings is a commonly praised endeavour, one that many businesses have publicly acknowledged, praised, and implemented to varying degrees. However, when analysing the direct opinions and experiences of women in the workforce, it is found that there is still a long way to go for businesses to support women employees, their careers, and their ambitions. Additionally, it is also revealed that there are many policies and procedures that can be implemented by businesses to facilitate women’s career successes – but these are missing or not employed correctly.

Based on the findings of research undertaken in 2018 by the Pearl Initiative and NAMA Women Advancement Establishment, this webinar workshop served to discuss the ways in which businesses can and should support women employees for holistic business success. It examined the factors that hinder and facilitate women’s career success, as reported in our 2019 survey by regional residents, and built strategic solutions to create a supportive environment for women in the regional workforce.

Topics discussed included:

• The factors that impact women’s workforce participation,
• The obstacles to women’s economic engagement, and 
• Concrete solutions that would support women at all career stages at individual and company levels.

In this webinar, we learnt:

• Why diversity and inclusion (D&I) matters, what the present metrics are, what specific difficulties are, and what the D&I scenario is across the Gulf Region
• About the landscape of gender diversity in the global corporate realm, as well as an explanation of the business case for increased diversity in businesses.
• About core topics pertaining to gender diversity, such as tokenism, glass walls, leaky pipelines, and broken rungs which explain situations that women come across in the course of their careers, which impacts their progression.
• The state of gender diversity across the Gulf Region, as uncovered in the 2019 research undertaken by PI and NAMA, and its various research outcomes and findings.
• About the factors hindering women’s workplace engagement, the factors women reported as beneficial for their career support, and the policies and procedures that women were looking for in a supportive company and work culture.
• About prominent regional companies with positive diversity policies in the form of case studies.