The rise of Arab businesswomen

Rahilla Zafar, co-author of Arab Women Rising, reveals the barriers female entrepreneurs in the Middle East are pushing through and the misconceptions about their level of success.

Rahilla Zafar helped to launch the Centre of Entrepreneurial Leadership at the Springside Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia. Jared Gruenwald for The National

Arab Women Rising details the journeys of 35 female entrepreneurs in the Middle East, including six from the UAE. The Pakistani American Rahilla Zafar, who co-authored the book with Nafeesa Sayeed, helped to launch the Centre of Entrepreneurial Leadership at the Springside Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia – intended to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset in schoolchildren. Here, the New York-based Ms Zafar discusses her motivation for writing the book – released in February and published by Knowledge@Wharton – and the current climate for businesswomen in the Arab world.

How did you get involved in this project?

When I lived in Afghanistan I saw how a lot of women were illiterate and there was an extreme interpretation of Islam that really held women back. The consequence of that was them not being able to support themselves, in a post conflict place, where their husbands had passed away. When I heard about how women in Saudi Arabia were challenging religious laws [so as to be able] to work, I thought it was important to cover that. At the same time, it’s not just Muslim women that are included. I also wrote a story at the end of 2010 about women entrepreneurs across the Middle East, and I was really blown away by what I found. There was a Qatari woman, Aysha Al Mudehki, who started an entrepreneurship centre to have better data that previously didn’t exist for entrepreneurs. There was a woman in Morocco, Lamia Boutaleb, who cofounded an investment bank, Capital Trust in Casablanca, and she talks about how she gets around business deals and really important meetings in a society that’s not 100 per cent mixed gender all the time. Some people might look at the Arab world as a place where women are mostly oppressed or not working or not ambitious — or when you see successful women starting businesses you think they are the exception. But that’s not true. Women from all across the region, from all socioeconomic classes are running and starting businesses.

How did you select the 35 women that feature in the book?

It was about going to the countries and seeing who was involved. There are a lot of mentorship events that have come up in the region and then once we were in the country, people would recommend people.

What is your main takeaway from writing this book?

It’s a very exciting time to be a woman entrepreneur in the Middle East. It’s an exciting ecosystem. Another stereotype is that you have to come from a certain class to be able to be successful or to have the capital to do it. I found with a lot of women they were entering competitions. Women in Egypt, for example, dreamed of opening their own stores but couldn’t afford to so they started their businesses online by launching a Facebook page; some of them did so well they were able to later open a store as well. It was amazing how tech-savvy they were and how willing they were to try different mechanisms and to see them go from having an online business that was successful enough to them to give them a store front.

You mention they are tech savvy. Critics often say, especially in the UAE, that women focus on microbusinesses that are not scaleable. Did you find that?

On the surface I can see why it seems that way. But there are women across the region who started businesses that there wasn’t even a business licence for yet. When they were going to register the business the government didn’t know where to place them and had to create a new sector. There was a woman in Tunisia, Wafa Sayadi, who started a for-profit trash recycling business and when she initially tried to explain what her business was to the ministries in Tunisia they said: “You are too pretty to be picking up garbage.” What’s being overlooked is the number of women who are engineers and who are involved in science. Even the technology incubators I visited in Saudi Arabia, the percentage of women who were part of those was way higher than in the US. It’s nice to see that there are a lot of high-quality incubators and training programmes that are now really [geared towards] creating something that solves a need in society, creating something that’s scaleable.

Did any particular woman stand out for you?

Rana El Chemaitelly from Little Engineer [which organises scientific workshops and courses for schoolchildren]. She really stood out just in the sense of half the time Lebanon is a very volatile place and she would wonder: "Why am I doing this? Am I crazy to be starting a business here?" She scaled Little Engineer not only in Lebanon but franchised it in other countries. And she has also been hired to give Little Engineer workshops all around the world now.

'Arab Women Rising' was published by Knowledge@Wharton. For more information go to http://kw.wharton.upenn.edu/arab-women-rising/

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