More equality laws on way from UAE gender council

The UAE Gender Balance Council is working on legislation to improve the country’s global gender ranking and further raise the status of women.

Sheikha Manal bint Mohammed bin Rashid, president of the council and wife of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs, announced the news after the council’s first meeting of the year earlier this week.

It came days after the Cabinet approved a wage equality law to ensure women are paid the same as men.

Sheikha Manal said the efforts of the Gender Balance Council, in collaboration with related government entities, were consistent with its mandate to review and propose legislation to support equal opportunities and narrow the gender gap.

The UAE was ranked first worldwide in three indicators in global gender diversity reports from last year.

It was first globally in “property rights between genders” in the Prosperity Index by Legatum Institute; as well as for “literacy rate” in the Global Gender Gap Report by the World Economic Forum; and “secondary enrolment gender gap” in the Human Capital Report by the Wef.

But it was ranked 120 overall out of 144 countries in the 2017 Wef Global Gender Gap

Report, and languished even farther towards the bottom of the list in a range of areas relating to the workforce.

These include 130th place for female economic participation; 129 for labour force participation; 134 for estimated earned income and 123 for professional and technical workers.

“I don’t know how far the Government is going to go because Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid [Vice President and Ruler of Dubai] wants us to be top 25 by 2021 in terms of gender diversity globally. We are currently 124th. That’s a massive shift,” said Louise Karim, managing director at Mums@ Work, a recruitment agency that connects employers with women seeking flexible work with employers.

The answer, she said, could be some sort of legislation or ruling to encourage or impose flexible or part-time work.

“Because [currently] you are still working on a full-time contract per se, as per the Ministry of Labour contract. That’s why people say it’s a very grey area.

“But if they brought in a parttime contract and the Government said it’s OK, you can do this and promoted it, you could get a lot more women back to the workplace.

“And also a lot more Emirati women, because they are very keen to go back to work but they have a lot of family commitments, probably more than us expats do.”

David Mackenzie, managing director of Mackenzie Jones Group, one of the largest independent recruitment groups in the GCC, of which Mums@Work is part, said it no longer finds that companies discriminate between male and female employees. It is now diversity more broadly.

“What you will find is that some clients will say we do not want someone from Kerala. Or we do not want someone from Britain. We are getting that a lot. I had that the other day from a client when I was briefed,” he said.

“They said they didn’t want any British people. I asked, why not? They said we have too many of them. And when you have too many of one nationality the collective thinking becomes the same, to a degree.”

The UAE ranked well in three indicators, but other reports showed there was still work to be done on equality