Female board directors now account for 7% of board seats in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), according to a new survey, representing a small increase from 6.9% in 2025.
The latest GCC Board Gender Index, published by Heriot-Watt University and Aurora50, shows that women occupied 403 board positions across the GCC in January 2026, up from 390 the previous year. When duplications are taken into account, this means that 341 women serve on boards across 759 publicly listed companies – seven more than in 2025.
The UAE has the highest level of female representation in the region for the third consecutive year, with women accounting for 15% of board positions.
While there has been some progress, the report points out that it is not universal across all sectors.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are the only GCC nations were women hold board positions in all available sectors. Overall, companies in the financial services sector show the highest rate of female representation; in the UAE, for example, women hold 86 of 564 board seats in the sector.
Quota effect
The small increase in female board members is a continuation of significant progress for the UAE; in 2020, just 3.5% of board seats were occupied by women. The Emirates introduced a quota in 2021 that requires publicly listed companies and private joint stock companies to have at least one female board member, expanded to include private firms from 2025.
No other GCC nation has put a quota in place, although board gender diversity is encouraged in Saudi Arabia as part of Vision 2030.
The report also draws a contrast with India, which has since 2015 required all listed companies and some public companies to have at least one female director, with financial penalties for those that fail to comply.
Before 2013, when the legislation was published, almost two-thirds of India’s top 500 companies had no female directors. In 2025, new legislation required at least one independent woman board director per board, following suggestions that some companies were appointing female family members to satisfy the legal requirements.
By the beginning of 2026, women made up 18.9% of all board directors in India.
Tokenism danger
A recent report by the GCC Board Directors’ Institute showed that there is some support for legislative quotas, although with caveats. Two-thirds of the senior women working in the region who were interviewed for the study said that quotas can support the advancement of women on boards, at least by kickstarting the process.
But some participants acknowledged that there can be challenges around quotas, including perceived tokenism and the mistaken perception that there are not enough qualified women available to serve on boards. The report concluded that quotas can work ‘with the right support in place’, and that an alternative was a voluntary target with a ‘comply-or-explain’ regulatory approach.
Either way, it added, any target should consider going beyond one woman on the board ‘towards at least 30% representation’, as this is the critical mass at which an under-represented group can effectively add value and make change.
