Dubai Eye Business Breakfast: Women in 30% leadership roles by 2025

With 18 UAE private-sector companies signing a Gender Balance Council pledge to put women into 30 percent of their executive roles, Aurora50 co-founder Diana Wilde spoke to Dubai Eye’s The Business Breakfast to discuss the issue.

The pillars of the voluntary pledge, she told The Business Breakfast’s Richard Dean, are equal pay, gender-equitable recruitment and transparency on progress towards the 2025 goal.

The private-sector pledge shows the UAE’s “commitment to becoming globally competitive”, Ms Wilde said.

“Gender parity is a great business opportunity, not a diversity problem,” she added.

To break the glass ceiling for women, she added, a pipeline of female talent needed to be built.

“When we look at what the skillsets are that are required for executive leadership: often women at mid-level aren’t getting the same opportunities to build that experience,” Ms Wilde told Dubai Eye.

“Profit and loss (P&L) experience , for example, comes up time and time again. We need to make sure those woman at mid level are getting that exposure.

“We even see people within the same sort of roles not getting exposure to P&L experience and managing budgets.

“Ultimately this is the kind of experience we need to ensure women are supported to get. They need that access, and then they need other people to provide a support system so they feel they can be successful in that role.”

Listen to the full interview at Omny.fm (starting at 23:09).