The Princess Sabeeka bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa's Global Award for Women

The Princess Sabeeka bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa's Global Award for Women Empowerment was launched at the United National headquarters following ten years of its hugely successful application at the national level.

     (Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/478421/Princess_Sabeeka.jpg )

The Kingdom of Bahrain offers its higly commendable expertise through this award after a decade of successful application at the national level yielded positive results in harmony with the goals and objectives of the national award.

The award today is qualified to be endorsed at the global level to encourage national efforts in the UN members countries aimed to empower women and to activate their role as equal partners in pushing the wheel of comprehensive sustainable development and to provide opportunity for international public recognition of the accomplishments of establishments and individuals in women empowerment arena, optimizing the positive effect of policies on the inclusion of women's needs in development and achievement of equal opportunities to advance women status, spread the message to the world, launched from Bahrain, which was selected as the Capital of Arab Women for this year, symbolizing the significant role of women in development and its effect in achievement of community-wide stability.

The award aims to stimulate and encourage official and private establishments and the civil society as well as individuals to achieve the components of excellence, leadership through effective efforts and sustainability to achieve stability, socio-economic, political empowerment for women and their participation in decision-making process for advancement of the society.

The award aims will be allocated in three categories to distribute prizes to the winners, $100,000 to each category. The award also aims to pinpoint the importance and the effect of states, authorities, institutions through their legislative and private and public executive bodies commitment to the policy of non-discrimination against women, achieveme4nt of equal opportunities for both women and men at all levels, showcasing the significance of collective and individual private and public efforts, initiatives, projects geared towards the inclusion of women's needs in creating positive transformation in their status to attain more stable and productive living. The award also encourages the adoption of policies to achieve the effect of sustainable development to become of an added-value within the frame of the family and the society, stimulate the communities to think and work creatively for women empowerment to achieve more socio-economic, political and familial stability and security for women and their families.

This originally local award since it was launched has achieved a high percentage of women's presence in the public establishments from 38% in 20016 and reached 49%  of the total workforce in the public sector in 2016 that constitutes an increase by 29%.

Bahraini women's presence in private sector establishments has risen from 24% to 33% of the total workforce in the private sector that constitutes an increase by 37.5%.

National efforts resulted in the Kingdom of Bahrain's ranking as the second top nation in the MENA-OECD economic development index2013. Bahrain has the second most ratio of women ministers among the MENA-OECD countries. Bahraini women achieved the highest percentage of women participation in the public sector's top administrative echelons attaining 54% and 59% in the middle levels. The increased participation in the award has achieved clearly good impact in the culture of the institutions and their disposition to adopt favorable policies for the inclusion of women in sustainable development and equal opportunities for them. The number of participating entities increased from 30 participating entities in 2006 to 67 participating entities in 2016 which constitutes an increase by 123%.

SOURCE Supreme Council for Women