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And Empowerment of Qatari Women for Employment in Qatar View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Nottingham Trent Institutional Repository (IRep) The “Glass Ceiling” and Empowerment of Qatari Women for Employment in Qatar By: Dr. Bothaina Al-Ansari DOCTOR OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY 1 The “Glass Ceiling” and Empowerment of Qatari Women for Employment in Qatar Bothaina Hassen Al-Ansari, Doctor of Business Administration, Nottingham Trent University, UK [email protected] Abstract: Qatar is rapidly transforming from a traditional conservative and modest society to a more open, modern and technologically advanced society. Qatar has made significant strides over the recent years in increasing the participation of women in higher education and in the Qatari workforce (Scott-Jackson, 2015). Women comprise 24% of the Qatari population and 18% of the workforce (MDPS, 2015), however, they remain concentrated in entry-level administrative jobs (Al Ansari, 2012) and mostly in the public sector. Is this inequality of participation of women in higher levels of Qatari organizations, a Glass Ceiling phenomenon that has been noticed in other countries and global organizations? The answer from similar previous research is “Yes” and this dissertation is an endeavor to further build on these reasons and highlight how this problem has sprouted in Qatar. Using an employment effectiveness route, to make employees both men and women, express their views of their current work experiences and their likelihood to continue or leave employment and complete their career objectives in the current organization, this dissertation will help understand whether the Glass Ceiling has external reasons or is it self-inflicted. Self- Infliction can be a reason from the lack of enthusiasm to progress into senior roles by women themselves due to the Islamic and patriarchal society values and the influence that this has had on women in Qatar and the entire middle east region in general (Ermis-Mert, A., 2018). The objective of this research is to find not only the reasons for the Glass Ceiling but also the solutions of how to use public policies and driving cultural changes to overcome this problem and to see Qatar fulfilling its vision 2030 in its entirety. 2 Table of Contents 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 6 2. Literature review .................................................................................................................................. 9 2.1. The Glass Ceiling phenomenon and its cause ........................................................................ 9 2.2. Engagement and Satisfaction as indicators of the Glass Ceiling ....................................... 13 2.3. Why should we solve the problem of women’s lack of career progression? .................... 19 2.4. Nature of the problem of women’s careers in Qatar:............................................................ 25 2.5. Can gender inequality be self-inflicted? ................................................................................. 32 2.6. Qatar’s response to gender inequality: ................................................................................... 43 2.7. Conclusions from Literature Survey ........................................................................................ 46 3. Methodology ...................................................................................................................................... 48 3.1. Research Questions, Ontological and Epistemological Assumptions ............................... 48 3.2. Research Design ........................................................................................................................ 50 3.3. Conduct of the Survey – Survey Participants selection, Data Collection Method and Ethical Process ..................................................................................................................................... 54 3.4. The Analysis Method ................................................................................................................. 55 4. Findings from the Qualitative Survey: ............................................................................................ 58 4.1. The Survey structure and how participants were approached: .......................................... 58 4.2. Demographics: ........................................................................................................................... 59 4.3. Analysis of responses: .............................................................................................................. 62 5. Discussions: ....................................................................................................................................... 72 5.1. Discussions on the Findings: ................................................................................................... 72 5.2. Solutions to solve the Glass Ceiling applicable to Qatar ..................................................... 76 6. Conclusions and Recommendations: ............................................................................................ 81 3 7. References: ........................................................................................................................................ 83 Appendix 1: Survey Questionnaire ........................................................................................................ 97 Appendix 2: Ethical process – The explanation provided to each survey participant in a Q&A format ....................................................................................................................................................... 102 4 Table of Figures Fig 1: Difference between SEM and Decision Tree Analysis ......................................................................................... 56 Figure 2: Decision Tree Analysis ................................................................................................................................... 57 Figure 3: Decision Tree used in the Employment Effectiveness survey analysis .......................................................... 59 Figure 4: Split between males and females in the responses ...................................................................................... 59 Figure 5: Split between age groups of the survey respondents ................................................................................... 60 Figure 6: Number of Females in the Survey Population ............................................................................................... 61 Figure 7: Current employment status of the survey respondents ................................................................................ 61 Figure 8: Age Group vs Employment Status of the survey respondents ...................................................................... 62 Figure 9: Age Group vs Employment Status of the survey respondents (male) ........................................................... 62 Figure 10: Decision Tree based analysis for employment effectiveness survey amongst employees in Qatari companies .................................................................................................................................................................... 63 5 1. Introduction Qatar is rapidly transforming from a traditional conservative and modest society to a more open, modern and technologically advanced society. Qatar has made significant strides over the recent years in increasing the participation of women in higher education and in the Qatari workforce (Scott-Jackson, 2015). Women comprise 24% of the Qatari population and 18% of the workforce (MDPS, 2015), and they remain concentrated in entry-level administrative jobs (Al Ansari, 2012) and mostly in the public sector. The research (Documents 2, 3 and 4) conducted as part of this DBA program has seen evidence of the fact that in spite of their higher graduation rates than men, women in Qatar tend to remain in middle-management jobs or entry-level jobs and do not move up to higher levels of management. Qualitative and quantitative tests as witnessed in other western countries (Simbula et.al, 2011) were discussed in length in Documents 3 and 4 and in relation to the Qatar job market to compare this phenomenon to known causes such as the Glass Ceiling Effect (Cotter et.al, 2001; Hymowitz & Schellhardt, 1986). A five-level gender equality maturity framework (Evanthia & Marina, 2018) was also used to test the maturity level of organizations in Qatar to establish gender equality across all levels of the organization. The results thus far from the previous documents submitted in this DBA program, indicate that strong reasons exist for the Glass Ceiling effects in the Qatari job market due to men dominating the workplace in higher rungs of the organization especially senior roles in leadership and management and such roles are stereotyped to suit men only. It is also to be noted that women voluntarily and in a self-inflicted manner stop progressing in their careers in order to strike a good work-life balance and focus more on family needs. The dominating factor amongst these two reasons has come out to be the male stereotype which has been the finding in the previous submissions of this research. Unfortunately lack of national policies and lack of government incentives
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