Pakistan bank CEO balks at being ‘token’
Yet she knows her rise makes her a role model for women
Sima Kamil is a reluctant role model in Pakistan.
The 61-year-old chief executive officer walks into a 21st-floor meeting room at United Bank Ltd.’s headquarters in Karachi, and right away says she doesn’t want to be viewed as a “token” woman and would prefer to discuss the bank’s strategy. Yet she recognizes that as the only woman heading a private sector lender in Pakistan — and one of the very few women leading companies in the country — she has a responsibility that goes beyond her job.
“It’s a privilege and a burden at the same time,” she says. “They roll you out. I’ve tried to avoid that, and it’s not always easy; some people feel I should do it because it’s part of my duty, so there’s a balance to be struck.”
Kamil’s rise through the ranks of Pakistan’s intensely male-dominated banking industry in the conservative Islamic republic is nothing short of extraordinary. Her appointment last year was a further milestone in a country that became the first Muslim-majority nation to elect a female premier, yet where about one-fifth of all women marry before they turn 18, and many still face routine domestic violence and repression.
Women from Pakistan’s elite have long held high political office. The most prominent was former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who hailed from a dynastic feudal family and was assassinated in 2007. From a less privileged background, Kamil’s path to the top came with considerable family support.
Her maternal family intently focused on education. Kamil’s mother studied philosophy at college, and her father met his future wife at a poetry reading in Lahore.
Her mother continued to enjoy and compose Urdu poetry and demanded the best schooling for her son and daughter.
“She was the driving force,’’ Kamil says.
Listing Margaret Atwood and Graham Greene as authors she enjoys, she became a keen student of literature and history.
Kamil moved to London and acquired an MBA from City University. Though she won a place to study development economics at Oxford, her family couldn’t afford it. Instead, she returned to Pakistan to work for American Express Co. in Karachi.
About three years later, Kamil landed a job at ANZ Grindlays Bank, first in Karachi and then Lahore.
Kamil’s ascent is all the more remarkable given the slow pace of progress for women in Pakistan. Just 22 percent of the nation’s female population is employed. That’s up only slightly from 20 percent in 2008, according to World Bank data; it compares with 24 percent in India and a 43 percent average rate in East Asia and the Pacific.
Nonetheless, Kamil was ambitious and rose through the ranks before being appointed CEO at UBL last year.
She acknowledges obstacles yet says she wasn’t treated in a sexist way.
“Sexism is you can’t do this because you’re a woman. I have not encountered that,” she says. “But, yes, as a woman when you go in a new role you get tested and people take a bit of time if they are not used to working with women to relate to you.”
Success came from Kamil’s abilities to galvanize her troops, according to three former colleagues, who asked not to be identified so they could speak freely about Kamil. She wasn’t authoritarian and gained respect through her focus and drive, they said.