Women in Leadership in the GCC: 2026 Evidence and Country-Level Progress
August 2, 2026 · Diversity · 9 min read
Women’s participation in leadership across the Gulf is changing quickly, but the evidence needs to be handled with more care than a single regional percentage can provide. Labour-force participation, managerial representation, board membership and executive leadership are different measures, and the six GCC states do not publish them on the same schedule or under identical definitions.
For that reason, this 2026 update does not present a synthetic GCC league table. Instead, it uses the strongest current official evidence available, shows where Saudi Arabia and the UAE have made measurable progress, and explains what employers should track inside their own leadership pipeline.
Why the data needs careful interpretation
The International Labour Organization’s 2026 brief on gender and labour statistics in the Arab States highlights an important regional problem: stronger, more consistent sex-disaggregated labour statistics are still needed to track women’s participation in leadership, pay, STEM, unpaid care and other dimensions of work.
That matters because several figures commonly repeated online are not directly comparable. A country’s female labour-force participation rate is not the same thing as the share of managers who are women. Board representation is not the same thing as executive leadership. Public-sector leadership can also look very different from private-sector leadership.
Source: ILO, Gender and statistics in the world of work in the Arab States Region, 2026
Saudi Arabia: participation and management representation have risen sharply
Saudi Arabia provides some of the clearest recent official data because women’s economic participation is tracked as part of Vision 2030.
The Vision 2030 Annual Report 2025 reports Saudi women’s participation in the labour market at 35.5% in 2025. It also reports women holding 43.9% of middle and senior management positions under the programme’s indicator set. These figures reflect a substantial change from the position before Vision 2030 reforms, although they should not be interpreted as meaning that women hold 43.9% of every form of corporate leadership across the Saudi economy.
Earlier official reporting also shows how quickly the labour market changed. Vision 2030’s 2024 reporting recorded Saudi women’s economic participation at around 36%, compared with 17% in 2017, and the National Transformation Program reported women’s representation in managerial positions above 40% under its indicator methodology.
Source: Saudi Vision 2030 Annual Report 2025
UAE: board regulation has produced measurable changes
The UAE has taken a different route, using corporate-governance requirements to increase women’s presence on company boards.
The UAE Capital Market Authority reports that women held 142 of 911 board seats in locally listed public joint-stock companies in 2025, equal to 15.5% of board seats. That compares with 27 female board members in 2020 and 47 in 2021.
Since 2021, listed public joint-stock companies have been required to appoint at least one woman to the board. A separate Ministry of Economy decision extended a similar requirement to private joint-stock companies: from January 2025, they must allocate at least one board seat to a woman when the current board’s term ends.
This is different from claiming that every UAE company must have 25% or 30% female board representation. The legal requirement relevant to these joint-stock companies is at least one woman, while broader gender-balance initiatives may set separate policy ambitions.
Source: UAE Capital Market Authority, Women Empowerment board statistics
Source: UAE Ministry of Economy decision on private joint-stock boards
What we can and cannot say about the GCC as a whole
It is reasonable to say that women’s economic and leadership participation is receiving substantially more policy attention across the Gulf than it did a decade ago. It is not defensible to turn incomplete country data into one precise GCC-wide leadership percentage.
The ILO’s broader global evidence shows that women remain underrepresented in business leadership worldwide. Its 2025 Women in Business and Management work reports that women hold roughly three in ten managerial positions globally, around 27% of board seats and a much smaller share of CEO roles. These figures are useful global benchmarks, but they are not GCC statistics.
Source: ILO, Women in leadership roles
Participation, management and leadership are different stages of the pipeline
An organisation can improve women’s overall employment without improving representation at senior levels. That is why employers should examine the full progression pipeline rather than celebrating one headline number.
A practical leadership-pipeline analysis should track:
- the share of women at entry, professional, supervisory, management, senior-management and executive levels;
- promotion rates by level and gender;
- time to promotion;
- voluntary and regrettable attrition;
- representation on high-visibility projects and succession lists;
- access to profit-and-loss, operational and strategic roles rather than only support functions;
- board-candidate and executive-candidate pools;
- pay and reward outcomes where legally and operationally appropriate to analyse.
This makes it possible to identify the exact transition at which representation falls, rather than assuming that the same barrier exists everywhere.
Mentoring is useful, but opportunity systems matter more than mentoring alone
Mentoring can provide advice, perspective and access to experience. It does not by itself change who receives stretch assignments, who is discussed in succession meetings or whose performance is visible to decision-makers.
Employers therefore need to look at the mechanisms that actually allocate opportunity. Sponsorship can be part of that system when senior people use their influence to put qualified employees forward for significant assignments and roles. But sponsorship should not become an informal favour network under a new name. Transparent eligibility criteria, documented decisions and multiple decision-makers make the process more accountable.
Make promotion criteria visible and evidence-based
Vague ideas such as “executive presence”, “leadership potential” or “fit” can mean different things to different assessors. They are difficult to audit and can allow personal familiarity or informal networks to influence decisions.
A stronger process defines the capabilities required for the role, uses behavioural evidence, records reasons for promotion decisions and compares candidates against the same criteria. Where practical, organisations can also monitor promotion outcomes over time to see whether apparently neutral processes are producing systematic differences.
Build development around the role, not around a perceived deficit in women
Women’s leadership development should not begin from the assumption that women need to be “fixed” to fit existing leadership systems. Many leadership capabilities are universal: decision-making, strategic thinking, communication, negotiation, financial understanding, stakeholder management, change leadership and team development.
Where a programme is specifically designed for women, its additional value should come from addressing real contextual issues such as access to sponsorship, navigating career transitions, building strategic networks, managing visibility and understanding organisational systems. The programme should not rely on stereotypes about how women supposedly lead.
Flexibility and care support are leadership-pipeline issues
Career progression is affected by whether employees can remain in demanding roles through different life stages. Flexible work, predictable scheduling, parental leave, childcare support and return-to-work practices can therefore influence the size of the future leadership pool.
Saudi Vision 2030 reporting explicitly links women’s labour-market participation with support systems such as childcare and transport programmes. For employers, the practical question is not simply whether a policy exists, but whether employees can use it without being informally penalised in promotion, assignment or performance decisions.
Boards and executive teams need different strategies
Board representation can sometimes change quickly through regulation or nomination policy. Building a deeper executive pipeline takes longer because it depends on years of role progression, operational experience, succession planning and access to decision-making responsibilities.
Employers should therefore avoid treating a single woman on the board as evidence that the wider leadership pipeline is balanced. Board composition, executive leadership, senior management and the broader talent pipeline should all be measured separately.
A better business case than “diversity guarantees higher profit”
Studies frequently report associations between leadership diversity and company performance. Those findings can be useful, but they do not prove that adding a particular percentage of women automatically produces a fixed increase in profit. Better-performing organisations may differ from weaker organisations in many ways, including governance, talent systems, sector, geography and management quality.
A more defensible organisational case for improving women’s access to leadership is that it:
- expands the pool from which leaders can be selected;
- reduces the risk that capable employees are overlooked because of informal systems;
- supports succession depth;
- helps organisations comply with applicable governance requirements;
- can improve the diversity of experience available in decision-making;
- supports retention when employees can see credible progression pathways.
UN Women’s 2025 private-sector review similarly argues that progress requires accountability, credible measurement and incentives, not commitments alone.
Source: UN Women, Unfinished Business, 2025
What an organisation can do in the next 90 days
- Map the pipeline. Measure representation by organisational level and critical role family.
- Audit progression. Compare applications, shortlist rates, promotions, high-visibility assignments and attrition.
- Define promotion criteria. Replace vague leadership labels with observable capabilities and evidence.
- Review succession lists. Check whether qualified women are entering the candidate pool early enough.
- Improve sponsorship governance. Encourage advocacy while documenting assignment and promotion decisions.
- Check flexibility in practice. Determine whether employees who use flexible arrangements experience career penalties.
- Set measurable objectives. Use organisation-specific targets tied to the actual bottleneck rather than copying a generic regional benchmark.
How MATSH approaches women’s leadership development
MATSH’s Women in Leadership Course focuses on practical leadership capability and career progression. The strongest organisational results come when development is paired with fair opportunity systems, transparent progression criteria and real chances to apply leadership skills at work.
Frequently asked questions
What is the latest Saudi figure for women’s labour-market participation?
Saudi Vision 2030’s 2025 annual report reports Saudi women’s labour-market participation at 35.5% in 2025. This is a labour-market participation measure, not the share of corporate executives who are women.
How many UAE listed-company board seats are held by women?
The UAE Capital Market Authority reports 142 female board members out of 911 board members in locally listed public joint-stock companies in 2025, or 15.5%.
Does UAE law require 25% female board representation?
The relevant UAE rules described here require at least one woman on the boards of listed public joint-stock companies and, from January 2025, at least one woman on private joint-stock boards when the current board term ends. Broader gender-balance targets should not be confused with the legal minimum.
What is the best way to measure women’s leadership progress?
Measure the full progression pipeline: representation by level, promotion rates, time to promotion, access to significant assignments, succession-list representation, attrition and board/executive candidate pools. One headline percentage cannot show where the real bottleneck sits.
Sources
- Saudi Vision 2030 Annual Report 2025
- UAE Capital Market Authority – Women Empowerment
- UAE Ministry of Economy decision on private joint-stock company boards
- ILO – Gender and statistics in the world of work in the Arab States Region, 2026
- ILO – Women in Business and Management, 2025
- UN Women – Unfinished Business, 2025
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