Best Regional Media Platform
Arab Women in Business Awards 2023, for original coverage of female founders across the GCC.
ARB Woman · est. 2017
Vol. IX · About
About the platform elevating Arab women who lead.
For eight years, ARB Woman has been the flagship media brand covering the women shaping business, policy, and entrepreneurship across the MENA region. Founded by an award-winning newsroom, read by ministers, fund managers, and founders in 31 countries — and built for the next decade of the Arab economy.
In this edition
The 2025 Ranking
·
Sovereign capital & gender-lens investing
·
Family business succession
·
The Gulf STEM pipeline
·
Regulatory reform, by market
The 100 Most Powerful Arab Businesswomen
Seven editions. One promise — the women shaping the region's economy, year by year.
Our annual ranking is the platform's signature editorial project: an audited, independently compiled list of the most influential women in MENA business, now in its seventh edition. Below, a record of every cover since the launch issue in 2019.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
As cited in
- Financial Times
- Bloomberg
- Reuters
Founded 2017 · Dubai, UAE
Founded by journalist Lina Al-Mansoori — our editorial standards and how we report on the women leading the MENA economy.
ARB Woman was founded in 2017 by award-winning journalist Lina Al-Mansoori, then a senior correspondent covering Gulf capital flows, who saw a clear gap: no independent media platform was treating Arab women in business with the rigour the story demanded. What began as a weekly newsletter has grown into a multi-award-winning publisher with a newsroom of 34 staff across Dubai, Riyadh, Cairo, and London — including 19 on-the-ground correspondents. Seventy-nine per cent of our team is women.
We publish original reporting on female founders, sovereign wealth and gender-lens investing, women in STEM, family business succession, and the regulatory reforms reshaping women's economic participation across the region. Our coverage is bilingual, Arabic and English, and reaches a combined monthly audience of 1.2 million readers — 47 per cent in the GCC, 28 per cent across the Levant and North Africa, and 25 per cent in the global Arab diaspora.
-
01
Independence
ARB Woman Media FZ-LLC is editorially independent of the brands, funds, and family offices we cover. Commercial partnerships — including closed-door capital roundtables hosted with 14 sovereign wealth funds and family offices — never influence story selection, sourcing, or ranking methodology.
-
02
The Ranking Methodology
The 100 Most Powerful Arab Businesswomen ranking is compiled annually through a three-stage process: a public nominations window, a market-weighted longlist scored across mandate size, capital deployed, headcount influenced, and policy outcomes, and a final independent jury review. The ranking is now in its seventh edition (2025) and remains the only independent audit of its kind published in the region.
-
03
Sourcing & Editorial Standards
Our reporting draws on on-the-record interviews with sitting ministers including H.E. Lubna Al Qasimi and H.E. Noura Al Kaabi, plus CEOs from more than 40 publicly listed MENA companies. Every ranked individual is verified by at least two independent sources. Survey research — including our 2024 study of 2,100 Arab women professionals that identified access to capital as the single largest barrier (cited by 68 per cent of respondents) — is syndicated across nine partner outlets.
-
04
What We Don't Do
ARB Woman does not promise job placements, board seats, or investment commitments through the platform; does not claim endorsements from any government unless specifically confirmed; and does not publish unverifiable compensation comparisons. We treat the women we cover as the executives they are, and the readers we serve as the decision-makers they are.
Recognition & citations
Recognized by the industry's most rigorous observers — and cited by the world's leading business desks.
Media Brand of the Year
Dubai Content Awards 2024, recognising editorial consistency, audience growth, and bilingual publishing standards.
Financial Times · Bloomberg · Reuters
Our original investigative reporting on Gulf women's workforce participation has been cited by the world's leading business desks.
34 staff · 4 cities · 19 correspondents
A newsroom of 34 across Dubai, Riyadh, Cairo, and London — seventy-nine per cent women — including 19 on-the-ground correspondents covering 18 MENA markets.
Coverage syndicated by
9 partner outlets
·
2,100-respondent survey
·
12,400 subscribers
By the numbers
The reach behind the reporting.
Eight years of editorial compounding — the scale our readers, partners, and policy audiences evaluate us by.
-
1.2M
monthly readers
Audited reach across the GCC, Levant & North Africa, and the global Arab diaspora.
-
4,200+
senior executives
Trusted members of the network across 18 MENA markets, including ministers, fund managers, and founders.
-
312%
newsletter growth, 2021–2024
Three-year readership compounding in the weekly briefing, now distributed in 31 countries.
-
612
mentorship placements
Women placed into board and VP roles through the ARB Woman mentorship network since 2019.
Other audited metrics at a glance — 1,800 attendees at the 2024 ARB Woman Summit in Dubai, with 42 per cent of speakers at C-suite level; 14 sovereign wealth funds and family offices partnering on closed-door capital roundtables; coverage syndicated across 9 partner outlets.
The weekly briefing
Read by ministers, fund managers, and founders in 31 countries — receive the weekly briefing.
One email each Sunday. The most consequential reporting, interviews, and capital-flow analysis on Arab women in business, selected by our editorial team and curated for senior decision-makers.