Abu Dhabi Sees Women as Route to Greater National Wealth - Building Gender Balanced Business

The Abu Dhabi government’s Economic Vision 2030 report outlines the emirate’s priority areas, objectives and guidelines for the next two decades. Women, along with young people and skilled expatriates, are a major resource the emirate is relying on for its growth in the next two decades.

• Increasing women’s presence in the work force, especially outside of urban areas, is critical to Abu Dhabi’s growth. The report urges looking into providing financial support women who work in their homes.

• Presently, only 18.5% of Emirati women in Abu Dhabi are employed, compared with the 13% average across all of the UAE.

• Katty Marmenout, a research fellow in the Women and Leadership in the Middle East programme at Insead, a centre for executive education and research in Abu Dhabi, told the newspaper The National that more must done to prepare women for the private sector. “There are many national women working now, but many largely prefer to work in the public sector. There must be more efforts exerted to prepare women and utilise them in the private sector.”

• Azza al Qubaisi, who founded the not-for-profit organisation Made in the UAE, said such government incentives as nurseries in government offices and a programme (Mubdiah) that supports home-based female Emirati entrepreneurs were succeeding in helping women increase their presence in the work force.

The National article