10:16 a.m. ET, May 1, 2019
Middle eastern finance types say they don’t have a gender problem
By CNN Business' Lydia DePillis
The Milken Conference is certainly no paragon of gender equality, with most panels heavily skewed towards men, and suits far outnumbering skirts in the audience.
But at least it’s made more progress than the Middle East, right?
But some of the region’s largest financiers and diplomats argue that they don't have a problem.
On her
panel about investment in the region — which featured entirely male speakers — CNBC’s Hadley Gamble asked,
“Where are all the women?” The response was vehemently defensive.
“We are very proud of what we have achieved so far,” said Ibrahim Saad Almojel, director general of the Saudi Arabia Industrial Development Fund, a state-owned financial institution. From a base of zero, he said, half of the fund’s hires have been women since the beginning of 2018, including a female Vice President of strategy and business development.
Likewise, the United Arab Emirates’ Ambassador to the United States Yousef Al Otaiba emphasized that a third of his country’s cabinet members, the vast majority of college graduates, and a third of members of Parliament were women. “I don’t think of this as an issue at all,” he said. Even if the current panel was all-male, he joked, that might be because “men are more eager to visit LA than women.”
Finally, Bahrain Economic Development Board chief Khalid Al Rumaihi said that his agency is working to institute a paternity leave policy to help women continue their careers after having children. "If you’re hiring on competence, you are going to hire more women than men,” he said. “In terms of women, I don’t think we have any issues.”
One wonders whether women in their countries would say the same thing.