Manal Zraiq: Facing the Challenges

A partner and general director of Massar Associates, Ms. Zraiq is an experienced business executive. A skilled communicator with demonstrated capabilities in the areas of team building and staff development, she is responsible for the management of the day-to-day business of Massar Associates and oversees the financial operations and project implementation.

Ms Zraiq has played a leading role in supporting the Massar Group investment projects and providing financial and managerial oversight to new business initiatives in journalism, informational technology, financial services, real-estate and media.

“Arab women have made major progress in effectively contributing to the political and economical global activities. You now see many more successful business women. Also in politics. For example, Kuwait is working to change the law to have a quota for women in the Parliament, in Jordanian politics there are elected and appointed women, and of course in Palestinian politics women has made major progress. We now have a number of elected women in the Parliament as well as three appointed cabinet ministers. However, the progress is not coming fast enough. We do not want just to make relative progress from a negative situation, we would like to reach equality and offer women equal opportunities both in business as well as in politics”, stated Ms. Zraiq in an exclusive interview to the MENA BWN portal.

With more than a decade of executive experience, Ms. Zraiq’s wide range of specialized skills include finance, business operations, logistical planning, human resource recruitment and management, accounting and operational management, and the establishment and implementation of management systems and administrative policy.

Ms. Zraiq managed multi-million dollar projects financed by international donors such as USAID, EU and the World Bank. She supervised every aspect of the projects from bidding, awarding, mobilization, implementing and closing.

Ms. Zraiq is head of the Palestinian hub of the Middle East and North Africa Businesswoman’s Network and the President of the Palestinian Women Forum which is the association for Palestinian businesswomen entrepreneurs.
When asked about the challenges she is facing in conducting her business, Ms. Zraiq said:” The challenges that face me at the work place are similar to the unusually harsh conditions faced by any other business person in Palestine…My business suffers from need for access permits and form limitations on moving goods across borders. However, the problem is much more severe to ordinary female employees. They line up daily at Israeli military check points to get to their work. They spend hours of humiliation either under rain or under the heat of the sun. Certainly, these conditions are bad to men and to women. But for too many women it is the end of their career as many conservative families do not want the women to line up in crowds with men. It is a sad condition that women suffer from terribly”.