Women and training: an empirical investigation in the Arab Middle East

Few studies have explored the professional training experiences of Arab women within the contexts of learning organisational cultures and relevant human resource development (HRD) practices. Capitalising on in-depth, face-to-face interviews, this study explores the experiences of women managers in Lebanon with professional training and organisational learning. The findings demonstrate the paucity of professional training and learning opportunities for women and illustrate how organisational discrimination and gender-biased cultures and tension influence women’s learning. To overcome these barriers and alleviate organisational tension, the Lebanese women managers capitalise on their agency and individual capacities to improve their training experiences and increase their access to learning opportunities. By virtue of individual agency and through their agentic process, the careerists shape their training and overall learning by being adaptive and developing structures of action that enable them to advance their learning. The results have important implications for HR managers and HRD scholars. They also extend our understanding of the importance, or lack thereof, of the learning culture within an organisation.