Byron James is used to being surrounded by women, so being one of a handful of men to attend a recent female networking and conference event did not faze him.
The barrister, who specialises in family law, manages a team of female lawyers, so when he heard about Own It: The Power of Women at Work Forum being held by the Dubai chapter of Ellevate, a global professional women’s network, he decided to check it out. The forum included speakers, discussion panels, interviews and networking opportunities.
“Our team is female-dominated, like a lot of family law is, and we are very positive in promoting women in our industry,” says Mr James, from the UK, who works for Expatriate Law, which advises British expats worldwide.
“I think because I have always been in that kind of environment and that kind of industry I have always seen the value of women in the workplace,” he adds.
But his industry has a problem. Women drop out in their droves mid-career.
It is a demanding job with long hours and often requires barristers like himself and his female colleagues to be at their clients’ beck and call at different times, including out-of-office hours. As someone who manages a team of female lawyers, it is his job to help mitigate that risk.
“The starting point is policies,” he says. “You just need to have policies in the workplace that are very well thought out, that are very well informed. We talked to a lot of other law firms about them as well. We take a lot of our ideas from much bigger firms.”
The firm uses Skype conferencing when needed to keep in touch with clients and allows its employees to manage their day in such a way that they do not have to be at their desks from nine to five.
“No lawyer works like that anyway. But having the technology in place and systems in place that enable people to do it, that’s key,” says Mr James.
Plenty of women attending the Ellevate event say they have benefited from similar policies in their own workplaces. But some have still had to prove themselves, often in male-dominated industries.
Dania Daoud is one of them. Her current employer, Credit Suisse, is extremely supportive of women in the workplace, but she says she was forced to prove herself to her male colleagues early on in her career.
“One thing that I can assure you is I have never, ever, in my whole career felt that I am any different from a man. He has a brain. I have a brain,” she says.
“Maybe he is easily accepted in the banking and finance world. It wasn’t that easy for me. I had to prove myself. I really had to earn their trust. But now I look back and I say it was worth it. It was worth it for me. It was worth the empowerment because I take myself as an example for the new generation.”
Yet most of the women she works with are still either in administrative roles or positions which involve less leadership.
“It’s not because of Credit Suisse. It has nothing to do with the bank itself. On the contrary, having that international, multicultural environment I was actually very much empowered by male leaders,” she says, adding that the problem partly results from a lack of confidence in some women in their abilities.
And one result of that, she says, is that they might be less likely to apply for some positions.
“So what do you do?” says Rana Nawas, the president of Ellevate and senior vice president of sales at GE Capital Aviation Services.
“When you are recruiting you write job descriptions that are so short they contain only the key essential traits to get the job done. Because if you write something really long, men and women behave differently. If men have a little bit of what is required, they will apply. If a woman has a lot but not all of what’s required she won’t apply for the job,” she adds.
But that is only part of the issue stopping women from entering some more male-dominated fields, according to Ms Daoud and Ms Nawas.
They say, and other experts agree, that the way we raise our children also has a big effect.
"We are addressing these issues in the workplace but they actually start at home," says Ms Nawas. "I read a study recently that said just by having neutral pictures in a computer room, girls were much more interested in computer science than if there were Star Wars posters."
Mothers of sons also have work to do, say the experts. If they raise their sons to view women as partners, they will behave that way in the workplace, says Nicoletta Papakyprianou, the vice president of human resources for the Middle East and North Africa at Thomson Reuters.
“It is coming with the new generations,” she adds. “But with our generation you still need to make some effort.”
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