Women in PR: Arab Nations Perspective

I have mentioned right from the start that most of my research into the issue of gender and public relations will be limited in scope, as resources only allow me to concentrate on the PR industry in the US and the UK. Most of the academic literature available to me is focused on those two countries, and so is the English-language information on the Internet. But I’ve been encouraging visitors to this blog to share their experiences of working in other countries, and have so far received interesting observations from my colleagues in the Pacific and Ukraine. Hopefully, more of you will enlighten me about the situation in your countries!

Well, this week I came across an article suggesting that the PR industry in Arab countries is no longer dominated by men (“PR Job No More Male Dominated”, Bahrain Tribune, March 13, 2007).



The article quotes Zahra’a Taher, the founder and Managing Director of T&M Eventscom (“one of the region’s leading public relations and event management companies”) and the “Bahraini PR Guru”:

“From my personal experience in setting up T&M Eventscom, I have discovered that we women in the Kingdom of Bahrain are very fortunate to have such strong support from the government and NGOs, which allow us to excel in all sectors – including the PR and media industry. Moreover, desktop surveys reveal that the Arab PR sector is largely dominated by women.”

In fact, Zahra’a even “believes that women [in Arab nations] face no more challenges in the PR industry than men”!

Now, Robert French of PR blog infOpinions? appeared quite surprised by the article, as, in his own words, “in male-dominated cultures, such as some Arab states, one might think that women are still shut out of the job marketplace.” I personally doubt that Arab women are shut out completely (there are a couple of female students from Arab nations in my MA course, some with experience of working in the PR industry, and I’m sure they wouldn’t be here if there was no market for female PR practitioners back home), and it could well be possible that they now outnumber men, however I am still unsure of whether these women are indeed in the same position as their male colleagues. Could it be that our female Arab colleagues do not have to deal with the same issues as Western women? Or is Ms Taher painting an overly optimistic picture of the Arab PR industry?

Robert French certainly makes a good point by highlighting that

“All that being said, one reality seems not to have changed. A male, Thamer Khamis Al-Muqla, is the CEO of T&M Eventscom. So, Arab PR practice may be developing the same characteristics of US PR practice. Men dominate in PR management and ownership. Women dominate in PR practice and direct client services.”

What do you think? Would be also interesting to see what my colleagues from the Arab states have to say.