The Abaya in the Boardroom

With strong role models and new opportunities, Arab women are making their mark in big business.

“I’m a serious private equity professional and not just a woman in finance.” At 26, Haif Zamzam, is senior analyst for Masdar Capital, the private equity arm of the multi-billion dollar Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, and one of a growing number of educated and ambitious young women who refuse to accept that any obstacle can stand between them and success.

She is also an Emirati from a traditional Muslim family with strong ties to her culture and faith. And she is a member of the first MBA module to be held on INSEAD’s Abu Dhabi campus, in the winter of 2013.

“Women are empowered here, there are opportunities,” Zamzam insists, referring to life in her native U.A.E. She describes a situation very different to the Western perception of the “oppressed Muslim wife and daughter”.

‘I could be that’

“When you look around Abu Dhabi and in the broader U.A.E., you see that women are taking on really high positions here, they’re represented at board level and they’re at ministerial level and you really feel that ‘I could be that one day’.” Zamzam spoke with INSEAD Knowledge during her MBA class module on the Asia Campus in Singapore in February.

This quiet advancing of Arab women is not confined to the U.A.E.; across the region they are becoming increasingly visible in the boardroom and taking on leadership roles in both the public and private sector.

Lara Boro, (MBA ‘96D) CEO International of British media company Top Right Group, like Zamzam had many female role models during her early childhood in Lebanon, all holding senior positions in government ministries, universities, media and the world of business and all convincing her she could be whatever she wanted. Since moving to Dubai four years ago Boro has travelled extensively across the Gulf region meeting many “impressive” female leaders in business, government and social services.

“There are more of them every day and the younger women I meet today are just as promising as the women I looked up to growing up,” Boro notes.
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The Abaya in the Boardroom