Bidiversity

Bidiversity founder Christina Ioannidis is in the Middle East this week, getting under the skin of some of the sterotypes surrounding the region, especially when it comes to women in business. Below is an extract of an article published by Arabic Knowledge@Wharton that is an example…

Reema Bint Bandar Al Saud is an Arabian princess with an entrepreneurial streak. As president and CEO of ALFA International and AL HAMA LLC, two leading luxury retail corporations in her native Saudi Arabia, and cofounder of Yibreen, a women’s day spa in Riyadh, she is eager to defy the misconception that Saudi women are unsophisticated consumers who will buy any product put in front of them. Saudi women are not only well-informed about their purchases, but they also seek out entrepreneurial opportunities to serve the needs of other women, she believes.

As if to prove that point, ALFA International owns the license for Harvey Nicols Riyadh, the U.K.-based luxury lifestyle store’s first overseas location, which employs Saudi women to be its lead buyers. Yibreen has gone beyond offering health and wellness services to providing women a place to network since its opening in 1999. Recently the spa hosted a fashion show where Saudi female designers launched new clothing lines. “It is a misconception that women have a long way to go,” Al Saud notes. “Our plight is not that far behind any other society in health and work.”

Her passage from palace to marketplace is a metaphor for a broader change: All over the Middle East, women are continuing to cross boundaries, going from being heads of households to small business owners to CEOs. While women entrepreneurs are a minority in most of the world, their presence in the Middle East and North African region (MENA) has been much lower in comparison to not only other middle-income regions but also predominantly Muslim countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. As the cost of living steadily rises in the region, though, and the need emerges for job creation for a growing labor force, women entrepreneurs are playing a role in creating new employment opportunities.

Overcoming Cultural Barriers

Although women are making major strides as entrepreneurs, cultural challenges remain in the MENA region. “Socializing on a business front is difficult after hours. If two families are talking over dinner, for instance, a woman likely won’t be part of that conversation,” says Al Saud.

Lamia Boutaleb, who cofounded Capital Trust, a Casablanca-based investment bank, believes these barriers can be overcome. “In investment banking, information is everything,” she says. While it may not be culturally acceptable for men and women to sit together in social gatherings, they still have opportunities to network. Boutaleb schedules appointments with her male counterparts in the industry during working hours and has found this approach to be effective.

Funding Challenges

In Saudi Arabia, women hold more than $13 billion in local bank accounts that could potentially be invested in the local economy. More needs to be done across the region, though, to fund new startups so that women do not have to rely just on funding from their families. While Saudi Arabia has various funds to help small businesses, communication about the opportunities that are available needs to improve, according to Al Saud. “A community or information center in the Chamber of Commerce or information online can help you find support,” she says.

Some of the challenges her firms face are labor issues. For example, bringing in fitness and beauty staff from Europe and South Africa is possible only because she has access to a group of financers through family contacts. Despite that, the visa process for employees, even for someone with strong connections in government, is long, bureaucratic and could affect business opportunities. “At the moment, the focus is on Saudization and big business that can support the training of staff,” she says. “It is good if you are a Cisco or an IBM that has infrastructure to support this, but for small businesses, it is hard to balance out Saudization and not fall back on the services you are trying to provide customers.”

With Abu Dhabi alone averaging daily revenues of $800 million from oil, Wharton management professor Raphael (Raffi) Amit believes that many Gulf countries could be more proactive in supporting all entrepreneurs, both male and female. He says Singapore might be a good model to follow since the government there has been supporting entrepreneurs through providing startup grants of $50,000 to $100,000.

Full Article Here