Women in management in the Arab context

Purpose This paper aims to explore the position of Arab women in management by examining the existing research on gender and management in the Arab region in order to obtain an overall picture of the advancement of Arab women in their professional lives, point out coherent clusters of research and identify knowledge gaps in existing research. Design/methodology/approach The study conducts a content analysis of academic articles in order to provide a quantitative as well as qualitative thematic overview of the topics emerged from the literature. Findings The statistical analysis of researches shows that, the topic of women in management is gaining more importance. The thematic overview of researches shows that authors have concentrated only on few and very broad topics, without much diversity or depth. Practical implications The paper provides practitioners some understanding of the position of Arab women in management and factors that influence their professional lives. The paper sets a solid base of previous studies for future researchers studying women in management in the Arab region. Originality/value The paper might be considered as the first study to give a systematic overview of the literature on women in management in the Arab region.