Inspirational female leaders: Elham Hassan

Elham Hassan is the country senior partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Bahrain. Located in Manama, the firm employs 77 people, of whom twenty five percent are female. The firm has a total of three partners, with Elham being the only woman.

The percentage of working women in Bahrain is still relatively low, although it is rising steadily and now stands at 31 percent (compared to 89 percent for men). In the private sector, this percentage is even lower at 24 percent.

Women face a number of challenges; pre-school education is not free and childcare provision is not supported through tax breaks or subsidies, with most working women using nannies, maids and other domestic help. Only 38 percent of Bahraini children are enrolled in kindergarten, whose hours are not geared to working hours. In addition, men are still widely seen as the main family breadwinners.

Changes are happening, however: the economic context is becoming more favourable to wider employment for women, as the country seeks to encourage the recruitment of more nationals (a third of the workforce is non-national). And a national strategy for women’s empowerment has also been put in place.

Hear more about the contributions that Arab woman can make to the world of work in the PwC film, Closing the Gender Gap.

Elham's story: Helping other women progress

I joined Price Waterhouse Bahrain in 1983, as a junior auditor. I wanted to go abroad and get my qualifications and I wanted to work outside the region. I immediately applied to go to London and earn my accounting qualification there. When my fiancé moved to the US in 1984, I decided to make the move with him to Boston to acquire the US accounting qualification. This made me the first person in the Middle East region to have the US CPA qualification. I returned to Bahrain in 1986, and I later spent a year in London.

After being promoted to partner in 1997, I became assurance leader for the Bahrain firm in 1999 and the Middle East independence leader in 2000. A year later, the country senior partner of the Bahrain firm left with many of the staff and clients and set up on his own. I was asked to take over the PwC name and many of the banking clients. I grew the practice from 12 people to the 80 people we have today.

Focusing on mentoring programmes

We really didn’t have a model for mentoring in the Middle East until three to four years ago. We had training, which was technical rather than interpersonal. Coaching and mentoring occurred almost by accident, if partners either had that intuition or came from other firms who had run coaching schemes.

This is changing—we started the high flyer programme a few years ago which focuses on diversity and talent management. We wanted to retain local and expatriate talent, as well as women. The programme provides mentors at all levels. We have been educated in the way in which we should be mentoring and have learned so much. We are now evolving this into a new programmed called FALCON, aimed at supporting high flyers.

Helping women to progress

I’ve made it a mission and a goal for myself to help women to progress. I’m happy to mentor and to talk to women and I’m already doing this for about six women in the region. I speak to women from different countries and I learn so much. It’s good to see how things are changing, and changing for the better. The new generation have different priorities.

In Lebanon and Egypt in particular I can see that we have a strong pipeline of female talent for the future.

A question of talent

I'm more involved with ensuring that credentials and abilities are recognised irrespective of gender. To me it’s about talent. Men tend to have more opportunities, but we all have the same abilities. Women have to work harder to prove themselves, and they only slow down once societal pressures increase.