The Arab Women Awards 2025 organised by the Arab Entrepreneurs Board at the House of Lords was nothing short of amazing — an unforgettable gathering where every speech flowed beautifully into the next, creating a powerful and unified message of inspiration for women everywhere. The energy in the room was electric, the words shared were deeply moving, and together they built a narrative of hope, strength, and unstoppable progress.
As a host, I was deeply honoured to be part of the speaker line-up, standing alongside such remarkable and accomplished women from both the UK and the Middle East: H.E. Sheikha Alanoud H. Al-Thani, Baroness Joanna Shields OBE, and The Rt Hon Joy Morrissey MP.
It was a privilege to share my thoughts on the extraordinary strength, resilience, and innovation of Arab women in entrepreneurship. Together, we are not just breaking barriers — we are reshaping the future, crafting a world where women’s leadership is celebrated, visible, and unstoppable.
Today, I invite you to join me in reflecting on how we can each contribute to this powerful movement — how we can champion women’s voices, support their journeys, and help amplify their impact across our region and beyond:
The Speech
Your Highnesses, Your Excellencies, esteemed guests, and the remarkable women we celebrate tonight, welcome!
مرحبا، نزلتم أهلا و حللتم سهلا
My name is Dr. Asma Ounnas. I am the Co-Founder, Chief Strategy Officer, and Women’s Champion of the Arab Entrepreneurs Board. It is a true honour to stand here before you at the iconic House of Lords, as we celebrate the extraordinary achievements of Arab women in entrepreneurship. And I’m here to tell you why we created this event? So why did we do it?
Honestly? To show off.
To show off these incredible women—their innovation, leadership, and impact across industries, many that are male-dominated. These women are creating real change, individually and collectively. They are shaping the future of the MENA region and beyond through entrepreneurship: economic growth, and community inspiration, making them an unvaluable asset to all of us, both locally and globally.
Success of course, is both objective and subjective, making it impossible to measure. So, we choose the ladies who are both breaking barriers in their industries, while creating space for others. You will see this, as their biographies are read later, and as their achievements are read, please remember they are but a fraction of what they offer the world.
These women are not just climbing ladders—they’re building them, building a new culture for business. Everyday these women: create ideas, innovate, pioneer, take decisions, argue the business case, take more decisions, balance family life, share the achievements, travel, work hard, attend events, support others, mentor, work out that to-do list, solve problems, adapt, change, disrupt, explain to people why they disrupt, manage the accounts, scale the business, manage the people, the relationships, the personal matters, study the market, break more barriers, manage, prioritise, challenge the norm, sustain, maintain, motivate, elevate, scale again, and repeat. Did I get it right? Maybe 1% of it, right?
We also created this event to ensure the visibility of right role models for the next generation.
Because, despite progress, gender bias persists—especially in business. If you ask a child to draw an entrepreneur, most likely they will draw a man, in fact, young people are nearly 4 times more likely to associate entrepreneurship with men than women. A recent study showed that 81% of 11 to 18-year-olds couldn’t even name a single female entrepreneur. This cannot be our future.
Female entrepreneurship matters. It challenges norms, transforms systems, and proves that leadership has no gender.
And final reason, we are here to shatter some stereotypes particularly about the Middle East.
Taking in results from the 2024 study by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, that studied women across 40 countries from all continents:
Stereotype 1
Women are less likely to aspire to start a business:
Globally, startup intentions are approximately 17% for women and 20% for men. However, In Oman for example this is (65%). This shows that women in MENA see entrepreneurship as a highly likely career projection.
Stereotype 2
Women take less initiatives than men to start a business from scratch – without any support:
Wrong!!
In the study: globally, 1 in 3 women were solopreneurs, compared to 1 in 5 men, and in Qatar, it’s even better: women were nearly 3 times more likely than men to launch solo businesses with no employees—showing incredible determination to succeed from the ground up as independent solopreneurs.
Stereotype 3
Women are less confident in their skills to start a business:
Well, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, nearly 90% of women believe they have what it takes to start a business—and 93% say they’d recognise the right opportunity. This was the highest rate in the study. Loving that confidence ladies!
Stereotype 4
Women might make better social entrepreneurs, but are less likely to grow wealth through startups:
Well, the first part is true, and that’s good: Globally, women are more motivated to start a business with the purpose of making a difference, and more likely to report having sustainability strategies and practices.
But this is where it gets interesting: Uniquely in the Middle East – women also match or surpass men in building startups for wealth. Great news for investors: with women-led MENA startups, you get both the ESG impact and the profits.
Stereotype 5
Beyond startups, women can’t scale as well as men.
Wrong again! In Saudi Arabia, women match their fellow men— as 10% of them own established businesses, proving they scale just as well. We certainly have better entrepreneurial ecosystems for women now, and it’s a good time to be a woman Entrepreneur.
But with all these said, whether in the UK or MENA, we still face challenges, we still have many gender gaps to close, and as long as we have these gaps, we will keep advocating and raising awareness. You all know how much we Londoners love to Mind the gap! So, Mind the gender gap!
Finally, I hope this event will be just like women entrepreneurs, inspirational, impactful, smart, with a hint of wit, and most of all valuable beyond expectations.
Thank you!
