Why do women occupy senior media and marketing positions in Lebanese banks?

Al Diyar daily newspaper published an investigative report on women high positions in media and marketing departments in the Lebanese banking sector through conducting a number of interviews with selected women. This website is uploading parts of that article while expressing some reservations regarding some of the opinions of the interviewed women who in our opinion fall into the dominant stereotypes about gender. Director of Media and Advertising at BLOM bank, Isabelle Naoum, for example, said she believed that “despite the many studies which tackled the subject of capacities in both sexes, however, the issue is not that of who is more capable or more talented; there should be an integrated teamwork or a merger of aptitudes of both sexes. She added: “Yes, men and women are not the same and that is why they complement each other”. Naoum’s counterpart in Fransabank, Dania Al Qassar, pointed out that recent international studies of banking institutions around the world, indicated that women, namely, working in the media, advertising and marketing sectors, are more capable than men in management, namely in the “development aspect of work, owing to their unique democratic and communicative qualities” particularly in dealing with co-workers. “The key to women’s success in management maybe attributed to the fact that women try to model themselves on successful managers anywhere in the world, learn from them and therefore inspire to develop their knowledge and build their own personal experience.” For her part, media senior manager at Bank Byblos Group, Nada Tawil, linked the matter to the society which looks to the education of women and men in a different way pushing young men or women into so-called “serious” or “easier” fields of specialisation and this according to gender. Hence gender imbalances in university specialisations, in terms of number of graduates, are reflected in the media and advertising sectors.

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(Al Diyar, 23 February 2015)