Under the “Challenger Programme” initiative, the UAE manufacturing industry will increase the female presence with the male, to improve gender equality in the sector. This program is brought by Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA), in partnership with Adnoc, Ducab, Emirates Steel Arkan, Siemens, Strata Manufacturing, Taqa and TechnipFMC to promote gender diversity across the industrial sector.
The announcement was made during the Inclusion Summit in Abu Dhabi in collaboration with the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation, with an aim to increase gender diversity with the help of social enterprise Aurora50.
Abdulla Al- Nuaimi, the Assistant Undersecretary at the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation, quoted “Gender balance is not just a moral obligation, but a smart business choice,” to urge women to join the “Challenger Programme” and to create gender balance in the corporate culture.
The foremost goal of the Challenger Programme is to advance the results of the industrial sectors with gender balance. This can happen with companies coming up with best practices, finding solutions to the challenges and their reach for higher participation of women in their sector.
The executive director of Adnoc Group, Yaser Almazrouei highlighted the prominent growth in gender equality since he started as an engineer in the sector for the last 30 years. Almazrouei marked Adnoc to currently have about 900 females, who are leading critical projects and operations on many of their sites, irrespective of challenges they are facing. In his statements, he emphasised the increase in women leadership to stand out at 20 percent at Adnoc. The vice president at Adnoc, Suhaila AlMazrouei, also declared to promote women in leadership positions in order to double their numbers in technical fields at Adnoc with the initiative.
The executive vice president at Emirates Global Aluminium, Iman al Qasim (largest industrial company outside the oil and gas sector) highlighted EGA to raise the number of women in directorial roles to 25 per cent by 2025, up from 20 per cent currently.
The whole campaign is a tremendous change over gender equality and women inclusiveness in a male-dominated sector, with a purpose to serve a gender balanced industrial sector in the UAE.