Can entrepreneurship be the answer to the women’s fairness and equity questions? can it be our long awaited solution to the many gaps we have to face with bravery every day? from the pay gap to the motherhood gap? Read my speech below for my personal reflections I shared at the Arab Entrepreneurs Board event at the UK House of Lords in our London.
Segment of the speech – December 2024
As a women’s champion, I am particularly proud of the transformative role women play in the entrepreneurship landscape across the MENA region. Women are stepping into leadership roles, driving innovation, and shaping industries with resilience and creativity. Industries that go beyond traditional sectors, particularly as the region embraces modern economies and emerging trends such as the knowledge economy, FinTech, and AI. As a proud Computer Scientist and financial professional who has always worked in man-dominated industries, I had to say that line!
We all know that there can be no progress—economic, social, or cultural—without the active participation of women. Our contributions are not just an asset; they are a necessity. And this goes beyond being included in the conversation, this is about the equitable power of decision making in the economic landscape.
I mentioned earlier that a human is the sum of their decision making, well the same applies to a community, a country, or a region, each being the sum of the collective’s decision making. Therefore, it is our collective responsibility to create environments where women are empowered, through actions, to lead in the entrepreneurial scene.
We (women) are challenged with all sorts of equality, or rather fairness, issues: the financial-gap, the opportunity-gap, the motherhood-gap, the pension-gap, the caregiving gap, the menopause gap, and the decision-making gap. Women can’t make it fairly to c-suit levels yet, but entrepreneurship (aka being the boss, or leading from the top) can be a solution for many of these challenges.
Through entrepreneurship, women can have more control over the decisions, the finances, as well as creating transformative impact, such as, changing corporate cultures and influencing how we perceive the balance between professional and family life, enforcing careers to be non-linear in nature and success to be redefined to take the female perspectives.
And because women are key to building a future where success is shared by all, when we (women) thrive, communities flourish, and the impact resonates. Through our collective efforts as women in entrepreneurship, we are not merely changing the narrative — we are the narrative, embodying the success stories that will inspire the next generation of leaders, and I hope there will be a day, where the only type of inequality we will experience, will be when the restaurant bill comes and the man offers to pay it all – that type is welcome 😊
