Siham Berrached, Managing Director, Emakina Qatar shares her thoughts about women in technology and how the women in the Middle East are slowly yet steadily carving their mark in this competitive space
IT and tech has traditionally been a male-dominated industry. This certainly isn’t down to a lack of female talent – rather the fact that historically such industries have always been led by men. In our younger years, it quite uncommon to be influenced by our parents or teachers to pursue a career in tech or IT. This ordinarily means that as we grow up as women, and become more exposed to the working world – we are often phased by the industry – down to a lack of exposure to it in our formulative years.
From a personal perspective, being a woman in a ‘man’s world’ has never really been a struggle. Despite that, it’s no secret that the majority of key decision makers do remain to be men. However, it’s interesting to see that from a creative and emotional stand-point – there’s no denying that women bring a lot to the industry. Women tend to have a natural finesse making them more cognisant of needs. One thought I often ponder on is that a team of male engineers for instance would always benefit from having a woman present to act as the ‘glue’ in any operation.
Looking forward – we’re making some great strides. In the UAE for example, 23,000 Emirati businesswomen are running projects worth over AED50 billion, and also occupy 15% of the positions in the boards of chambers of commerce and industry nationwide. In Saudi Arabia, women’s participation rate in the IT sector rose from 11% in 2017 to 24% in 2021. This is something that would have been unthought of just a short while ago.
We’ve also seen tangible movement in the technology industry of Qatar- Microsoft and INJAZ Qatar recently launched “Women Technopreneurs” which aims to empower, assist and guide women who are interested in the digital and technology sector.
