The leadership journey of MENA Women in a changing context

Due to recent major societal and political changes (Vision 2030 for Saudi Arabia, Vision 2021 for UAE), women from MENA countries have accessed to new opportunities (Alhawsawi et Jawhar 2023; Saleh et Malibari 2021). However, this changing situation of women in these contexts remains underexplored (Jamjoom et Mills 2023) especially according to cultural aspects. In existing studies, Western eyes (Mohanty 1988; Syed et Metcalfe 2017) influence the analysis, mainly focusing on barriers and reducing women as passive victims. In this study, we adopt a different perspective. Our research aims to give voice to Saudi and MENA women and describe how they use these ongoing societal and political changes to cross social and gendered boundaries to explore new territories (in their professional lives but also their private lives) to occupy new leadership positions. Thus, our study aligns with the call for new approaches to consider the diversity of cultural-political-religious contexts in leadership and management studies (Jack et al. 2011; Manning 2021; Metcalfe et Woodhams 2012). Following recent studies (Jamjoom & Mills, 2023), and in line with our aim, we adopt a post-colonialist feminist perspective (Ozkazanc‐Pan 2012). Based on a qualitative design, we had the opportunity to interview 31 young women in leadership positions or who were becoming leaders in their professional context. Some of them are involved in the emerging domain of sports management in Saudi Arabia, while others are ambitious leadership positions after an MBA. The research has been undertaken within two distinct periods: a first set of interviews have been done in 2019, when the reforms were just beginning and the second set of interviews have been done five years later, in 2024. This two-phases qualitative research sheds a light on the evolution of mindsets and perceptions of Arabian Gulf women in managing positions.
The contributions of this study are three-fold. First, our findings renew and challenge the gendered Western-centric concept of leadership. Second, our findings outline how these women enact agency strategies to cross societal boundaries and challenge gender norms. Far from being passive and vulnerable, our respondents illustrated their everyday agency (Butler, Gampetti, et Sabsay 2016; Kanal et Rottmann 2021) at work and in their private lives. This study contributes also to documenting how macro changes (here political ambition translated into institutional policies -for instance, Vision 2030)- may have societal consequences and effects on the micro level, here on individuals, on women. This study has also been an occasion of a work on self-reflexivity for Western researchers to cross their unconscious bias toward Muslim women.