Woman Empowerment in Bahrain: meet 3 women who made it in the business world of Bahrain

There is no doubt that there has been a gradually increasing focus on woman empowerment and enablement and gender equality in the last few years. This growing attention can be attributed to multiple key reasons, the most important of which being the increasing civil awareness of the woman’s critical role in building societies as well as her abilities to do different jobs which have proven to meet the needed standards multiple times. The most notable reason behind this rising, however, is probably the women who have fought to prove themselves and succeed in their fields.

Needless to say, the difficulty of succeeding in male-dominant industries was magnified multiple times in tshe Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region since their role have been mostly restricted in very limited areas because of the conservative nature of the GCC society. This, however, has started to change recently.

The Kingdom of Bahrain comes as one of the shining examples of this change, as Manama, the Bahraini capital, has been chosen to be the Arabian Woman Capital in 2017; this comes in line with the Kingdom’s economic growth and development to become one of the major financial and business hubs in the region. In addition to that, the Kingdom of Bahrain has achieved the first rank in the Self-imployed Females index with the percentage of 28%.

Here, we demonstrate three proud examples of some of the most successful business women in the Bahraini Kingdom who have contributed significantly to the kingdom’s economic growth:

1) Shaikha Hend bint Salman Al Khalifa:

The chairman of Bahraini Business Women Council, Shaikha Hend bint Salman Al Khalifa has roles that are too many to be mentioned here in details whether they were in business or society or politics which all aimed at supporting female small investors and entrepreneurs.

To mention a few of her accolades, Shaikha Hend bint Salman Al Khalifa worked as the chairman of both Al Rashia Investment Commercial Group and Bahrain’s Children and Mother’s Welfare Society.  As for her political and societal achievements, she was one of the designers and founders of Batelco Institute for children whose parents are unknown. She also contributed to issuing the law of civil society organization.

2) Nabila Al Khair:

One of the most prominent female figures in the Bahraini society, Nabila Al Khair is not just a successful business woman; she is originally an artist who made of the woman the common theme between most of her works. She also plays a major role in supporting and enabling woman whether locally within the kingdom or internationally.

It is worth mentioning that Nabila Al Khair has participated in multiple art exhibitions with her artworks both inside and outside of Bahrain in Cairo, Beirut, Bejing and many other major cities around the world.

3) Sonia Ganahi:

Sonia Ganahi has one of the most aspiring success stories when it comes to business women; she started small by taking the risk of quitting her fixed full time job to make herself a space in the business world, aided by her own long experience in banking and investments.

Ganahi started by taking a loan from a bank to co-found a real estate investment company with Emirati partners and an architectural design services company. This was all before the global financial crisis of 2008 took place; back then investing in the Bahraini properties was at its peak and it was considered one of the most powerful economic sectors of the kingdom.

However, in the aftermath of the crisis, Sonia Ganahi has shifted her attention and business to chocolate to become the owner of the first chocolate factory and company in Bahrain. It is worth mentioning that Sonia Ganahi has studied chocolate making art in France and Belgium which helped her lead and manage her company successfully and now she has 11 offices in different arab countries.

In addition to the above, Ganahi is an active philanthropist as her company organizes several events for young cancer patients to help them overcome the pain of their illness in cooperation with several Bahraini societal initiatives.

In the end, Kingdom of Bahrain is full of successful shining examples of business woman and female entrepreneurs who successfully made a successful brans out of themselves and became a source of inspiration for ambitious women not only in Bahrain but in all of the Arab World. It is safe to say that we are going to hear more success stories of Bahraini women in the near future.