Emirati women ‘more likely to work in banking’
ABU DHABI, July 29, 2015
Emirati women are more likely than their male counterparts to consider a position in banking and finance (29 per cent versus 11 per cent), found a major survey on Emiratisation.
The ‘Emirati Employment Report’, by Oxford Strategic Consulting, also found that Emirati males were more likely than females to work in defence and security (52 per cent vs 18 per cent).
The findings have revealed an opportunity for organisations in the banking and finance sector to maximise their national employment processes by focusing on recruiting Emirati women.
Increasing female employment is a strategic country priority for governments and organisations across the GCC.
The best approach, however, to integrating more national females into the workforce remains unclear. It is clear, though, that maximising female employment in the GCC will require a country-tailored strategy.
In this respect, the survey results indicated that the UAE’s banking and finance sector should serve as a focal point for integrating more Emirati females in the workforce.
It also revealed which organisations Emirati females ranked as employers of choice. For example, about 15 per cent of the Emirati females surveyed ranked the Real Estate Bank and the National Bank of Abu Dhabi as the best employers in the UAE.
More can be done to identify what these employers of choice are doing correctly so that other organisations within the banking and finance sector can learn useful techniques for attracting and employing more Emirati women, said the survey.
Moreover, female employment lessons from the banking and finance sector should be shared with other sectors to replicate similar success stories in other segments of the UAE’s economy, it said.
The governments and organisations in GCC countries like the UAE understand that national females are an under utilised human resource, the survey pointed out.
The best approach for integrating more nationals into the workforce begins with considering the views of Emirati women themselves, it added. - TradeArabia News Service
