Women STEM leaders in the GCC: building resilience in the face of bias

Purpose Research about women working in STEM fields often centres upon exploring and understanding the different challenges and barriers which they face in STEM workplaces, hindering their career progression. This study uses an alternative angle, instead seeking to understand the experiences of women who are successfully thriving in STEM leadership positions. Design/methodology/approach With this goal in mind, 15 women STEM leaders in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries participated in in-depth interviews, exploring their career trajectories through narratives. These participants were recruited from a variety of STEM fields, including corporate, industrial and higher education, all holding current STEM senior leadership roles. Their responses were viewed through a lens of gender micro-politics, enabling a more nuanced exploration of factors which influence and enable women STEM leaders. Findings This study provides further evidence that women STEM leaders experience gender bias in their roles, across phases and STEM sectors, and they use various approaches to deal with this. They report experiencing micro-political behaviours during meetings and recruitment processes, subverted communication of gendered stereotypes and missing opportunities which arise during informal conversations and networking. Resilience was a key theme in participants' responses; a characteristic built up in order to deal with and strategise to overcome experiences of bias. The necessity of being resilient to succeed may also indicate that organisational conditions are less than ideal. Research limitations/implications By focusing on women who have already achieved positions of leadership and success in STEM fields rather than using a deficit model and attempting to understand this from women who leave or not progress in the field, this study fills a gap in existing research on ways to halt the “leaky pipeline” higher up the STEM workplace. Practical implications The research provides evidence of strategies which successful STEM leaders have used to effectively build resilience and overcome the prejudice they face, on an intersectional level, providing practical implications. Social implications Social implications of the study findings include the importance and influence of family support in the women's professional trajectories, more so than peer networks of support. The nuanced nature of connections made informally in the workplace, and which the women were sometimes excluded from in male-dominated workplaces, also negatively impacted them at times. Originality/value The findings can inform women themselves and support Human Resource (HR) professionals and professional associations to develop useful policy and practice guidelines to support and retain women working in STEM fields. Additionally, scant research has taken place in the GCC context on these issues, yet with future regional plans for phenomenal growth in the STEM sector – applications of technology in particular – insights into HR management policy and practice relevant to STEM leaders are important.