How Might We Increase Women Representation in Senior Roles in the Saudi Public Sector?

Abstract

Women in Saudi Arabia have experienced vast changes in the last few years. The new era is described as a “Golden” era for women. Despite the country’s low rank in various global gender equality indexes, women's empowerment is at an accelerated pace after the announcement of Saudi Vision 2030. This capstone project is carried out for Cella, a social network for professional women in Saudi Arabia. It aimed to identify opportunities to help increase women in senior roles in the public sector. These opportunities were translated into business model interventions. The data collection process included observations and one-on-one interviews with female leaders, male public officials, researchers, and elite interviews. To solve the problem of limited representation of women in senior roles in the public sector, the analysis revealed a chain of causality including “HR is not Ready”, “What Got You Here, Will not Get You There”, “Limited Sources for Professional Development”, and “Tough Transition from Segregation to Integration”; each of these themes carries other sub-themes. Accordingly, the theory of change was designed by identifying the target population, assumptions, short, medium and long term impact. This resulted in 4 interventions including “Nudge for Behaviour Change”, “Executive Training for Women”, “Cella Podcast”, and “Launching a Solidarity Campaign". These interventions are discussed in terms of 4 areas of Cella’s business model: (a) value proposition: introduce the open source way in some services, (b) key activities: introduce services that go beyond empowering women as individuals, (c) key resources: create a strong network effect, and (d) key partners: suggestions to expand to other key stakeholders in the ecosystem. Unlike many gender studies, which focused on making policy recommendations, this project presents business opportunities to increase women representation in senior roles. These interventions should help Cella to remain sustainable, and to reap better social and financial returns. The project concluded with suggestions for future research about Women-Only Networks, gender dynamics and empowerment.