Online Newsroom: Egypt News Archive
Path to the Top
March 4, 2010
Business Today
Loula Zaklama, a highly sought after advertising pioneer, Neveen El Tahri, chairperson and managing director of Delta Holding for Financial Investments, Sisters Hind and Nadia Wassef and Nihal Schawky, founding partners of successful bookstore chain Diwan, are five of the most prominent entrepreneurial women in Egypt. In an interview with Business Today, they reflect on their success and discuss why more women haven’t reached the upper echelons of the corporate world.
“It was very, very hard but it never occurred to me that I was going to be able to work or succeed,” says Zaklama. Five decades after she got started in advertising, Zaklama is still an outlier. Only 15% of private sector workers are female. Women make up just one in five small-or medium-sized business owners; in Western countries, the ratio is close to half. In Egypt, women need not look far to be reminded of their traditional roles. In the business community, the gender contrasts are emphasized even further.
El Safar explains that the stigma facing women manifests itself in unexpected ways. She cites difficulties getting loans for business start-ups as a prime example. Pressure on ambitious women is different than on their male counterparts, she says, and there are psychological barriers that need to be overcome along with more tangible obstacles. The gravity associated with requesting large loans often leads women to ask for less than their male colleagues might, she says.
But these entrepreneurial women do not seem phased by the things that set them apart from the men; in fact, they see them as an advantage. El Tahri believes that such differences are what make women more dedicated and eager to prove themselves. “I think it is part of our DNA and how we were brought up,” she says, explaining that from childhood girls are accustomed to gender disparities and that instills in them a drive to prove their capacity for success.
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