Six new UAE companies sign Gender Balance Council pledge

There are now 24 major local and international private-sector companies, all operating in the UAE, that have voluntarily pledged to the UAE Gender Balance Council to put women in 30 percent of their leadership positions by 2025.

The pledge was later renamed the GBC SDG 5 pledge as it aligns to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal no.5 – gender equality.

The first tranche of 18 companies signed up in January and, in March, a further six added their names to the roll:

1. The Coca-Cola Company
2. Danone Nutricia
3. DP World
4. Kearney
5. KPMG and
6. VFS Global (Visa Facilitation Services Global).

Six new national and global companies signed the pledge to Accelerate Women’s Partnership in the UAE Private Sector to reach 24 companies in total.@COCACOLA_ME @DPWorldUAE @VFSGlobal @KPMG_LowerGulf @DanoneResearch pic.twitter.com/9onJuAngU9

— UAE GBC (@UAEGBC) March 17, 2022

Mid-level accelerators for women

“Mid-level women need opportunities, and access to the type of experience they will need higher up,” Aurora50 co-founder Diana Wilde says. “Then, on top of this access, we need to encourage women to step forward, to inspire and educate them to take on those roles.”

One of the biggest issues for mid-level women, she says, is getting access to key executive skills such as profit and loss (P&L) or budget experience, which are ‘musts’ for executive roles. It is also important to start women early, to create a lengthy C-suite pipeline, she adds.