Beyond Quotas: What It Really Takes To Build Environments Where Women Thrive

Quotas can change numbers. But they don’t automatically change lived experience. 

I’ve been in rooms where the headcount looked “good” on paper, yet the atmosphere told a different story: women invited in, but not truly heard; promoted, but not sponsored; praised for delivery, but penalized for directness; expected to lead, but only inside a narrow perception of what leadership is “supposed” to look like. 

So, when I’m asked what it will really take for women to thrive in the UAE and wider Middle East, my answer is simple: we have to evolve the environment, not just increase the metric. 

The region is moving. The GCC Board Gender Index Report 2025 found women held 6.8 percent of board seats across the GCC as of January 2025, up from 5.2 percent in 2024, with the UAE leading at 14.8 percent (185 of 1,248 seats). That matters. It signals intent.  

But representation is the beginning of the journey, not the finish line. Thriving is being fully expressed—with influence, honesty, and the inner permission to lead. Which is why, quotas can open doors, but culture decides what happens once you walk through them. 

From Numbers To Nourishment: Designing The Conditions For Thriving 

At RoundTable Global, we treat leadership as an ecosystem. Healthy ecosystems have complementary elements: structure and flow, action and reflection, ambition and renewal. In human systems, we experience these as the masculine and feminine qualities that exist in all of us, regardless of gender. 

At their best, masculine qualities give us clarity, boundaries, decisiveness, and the courage to act. At their best, feminine qualities give us collaboration, creativity, intuition, and the ability to sense what’s emerging. Thriving cultures don’t idolize one and dismiss the other. They integrate both. So, if you want women to thrive, design for three conditions: 

1. Self-honesty as a leadership standard. Self-honesty results in honest confidence. It leaves leaders knowing they can offer a different view, ask a question, and raise an issue with respect, and that the response will be curiosity and problem-solving rather than judgment. In fast-moving sectors like hospitality and high-growth business, this becomes a performance advantage: people speak earlier, learning happens faster, and solutions arrive sooner. 

2. Sponsorship, not just mentorship. Mentorship is guidance. Sponsorship is active support. It sounds like: “I’m putting your name forward.” “I’m backing you for this stretch role.” “I’m going to create visibility for your work.” When sponsorship becomes a shared leadership habit across genders and levels, progression stops being accidental and starts becoming a clear pathway. 

3. Visible, fair rules of engagement. Thriving accelerates when expectations are clear and consistent. When teams agree how decisions are made, how workload is shared, how boundaries are respected, and how contributions are recognized, people can focus on excellence instead of second-guessing the system. Clear agreements also make it easier to value the full range of leadership contributions—delivery, collaboration, cohesion, and care—as part of high performance. 

Leaders Aren’t Born; They’re Shaped—And Everyone Can Lead From Where They Are 

Leadership is not a personality type. It’s a practice. It can be learned, trained, strengthened, and embodied. 

This is the essence of what we call “leading from the center.” The center is not a title. It’s the point of influence: the person who stabilizes a moment, speaks truth with care, is self-honest, and takes responsibility for the energy they bring into the room. 

When organizations cultivate “leading from the center,” leadership takes on a different role. The leader feels part of an organism, an ecosystem that is interconnected, rather than silos, dominated by hierarchical decision-making. Culture stops depending on a few heroic individuals, and women stop waiting to be “chosen.” They start shaping outcomes in real time. As Simon Sinek put it: “leadership isn’t a title you earn; it’s an action you practice—especially when nobody else is stepping forward.” 

This is why I co-created SHINE: to offer practical, repeatable tools that shape leaders from the inside out. Tools that support clarity, well-being, confidence, and courageous action in the moments that matter most. Keeping that premise in mind, here are three tools I keep returning to because they work across cultures: 

1. Self-awareness under pressure. Leaders don’t rise to the occasion; they are driven by their patterns. When you can notice your pattern (defensiveness, rushing, people-pleasing, control), you can self-reflect and automatically see yourself choose a different response. That pause changes meetings, teams, and outcomes. 

2. Coaching language that builds capability. If we want impactful leadership, leaders must stop rescuing and start coaching. Ask: “What do you think the real issue is?” “What options do we have?” “What is your contribution here?” “What’s the next right step?” People learn to lead by being given the space to practice radical honesty. 

3. Balancing drive with renewal. When cultures celebrate exhaustion as proof of commitment, they quietly punish the feminine qualities that keep systems healthy: reflection, recovery, relationship, and meaning. Build rhythms that honor both: clear goals and genuine renewal.

Beyond Quotas: The Leadership We’re Here To Build 

Don’t treat women’s advancement as a program. Treat it as an evolution of leadership itself. 

Also, remember that quotas can open doors. But thriving requires balanced environments where both men and women can be powerful and human, ambitious and healthy, decisive and empathetic.  

That is the future I’m committed to building—through RoundTable’s philosophy, through “leading from the center,” and through SHINE as a toolkit that turns potential into lived leadership. 

About The Author 

Tiffany Kelly is the co-founder of RoundTable Global, an internationally recognized learning and development organization, and the co-creator of SHINE, a leadership and well-being methodology designed to develop honest, balanced leadership at every level. She is also CEO at Beyond Bamboo Global, where she is helping shape a values-led, commercially rigorous approach to sustainable procurement for hospitality, bridging operational performance with measurable environmental and social impact.