December 2018 www.womanthismonth.com 18 showcase Hosts BAHRAINI WOMEN WRITE THEIR NAMES IN HISTORY As Bahrain Women’s Day approaches, Imtiaz for Her Hosts two high-achieving women, who have certainly made their mark on the Kingdom. Bahrain is seen as one of the region’s most progressive countries. How did the policies, processes and attitudes here assist you in your career journey? Bahrain has always been a very progressive country and women have been given the opportunity to choose and to do the things that they wanted. The Culture that we have in Bahrain is a culture that allows women to choose to study, go abroad to study and to do whatever they think is appropriate. I think we have a very open-minded culture and society and that’s why we’ve been able to do a lot. Bahrain as a government has always put policies that asked for equal opportunity which we have right now between men and women. And such things did help us. If you see in real life, whether it’s in education or in business, the majority are women I think. In education, for sure, the majority are women who are going to college. In the workforce, they are 30-40 per cent which is not a bad percentage when you think that quite a large group would [still] prefer staying at home and raising their children, which is a wonderful thing to do. Did you feel you had to battle to make your mark? And what were the main challenges you faced? As for the challenges, there are lots of challenges. There is no difference between male or female, the challenges are always the same. It’s how you prove yourself, your ideals and stamina and show people that you are strong enough to be able to withstand the challenges – so, it’s all there. Maybe there are sometimes some things that might affect women more than men especially such as maternity leave or women who take time out to raise children; when they come back to the workforce, they will have lost a lot of experience, those are hard challenges. What would you say has been your proudest/greatest achievement? To be able to help others and to support other people who are in need and to gain their love, their trust, their respect. In addition, looking at how you can transform your dreams and ideas into reality. I’m very happy that many of my ideas, I was able to make them into reality and this is something that I’m proud of. Aside from being an incredibly successful businesswoman, you have demonstrated strong philanthropic ideals and active CSR commitments. Is this something you feel is more prevalent among women in business? Social work, charity work, philanthropy is something I love to do, I think many people do, it’s not particular to women, it’s men and women. There are other people who don’t like to do it at all. As for me, one of the things I’ve done is that I established, with colleagues, Bahrain Trust Foundation which is a charity, not-for-profit organisation and we’ve been building schools around the world. We have our own idea of microFormer Minister for Social Development, Health and Human Rights and now chairman of the Bahrain Trust Foundation. FATEMA AL BALOOSHI
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