UAE women business leaders are more optimistic and ambitious, mindful of the environment, social and governance (ESG) agenda, govern with empathy and are hungry for change, a new report by KPMG showed.
The report, titled the KPMG 2022 Women Business Leaders Outlook, which surveyed female leaders from 50 countries including the UAE, showed that 64 percent of women prioritise investments for developing employee skills and capabilities whereas 24 percent men prioritise buying new technology.
UAE women business leaders are also more “people-focused and empathetic” than their male counterparts, the report said.
“The participation of women in the UAE government is amongst the highest in the world, reflecting the UAE’s strong commitment in empowering women. There is no doubt that women leaders bring a fresh perspective and invaluable insights to leadership positions in both the public and private sector,” KPMG Lower Gulf chief executive officer-elect and senior partner Emilio Pera said.
Seventy two percent of UAE female leaders also felt their organisation “has a responsibility to help with reskilling the workforce to avoid lay-offs, compared to 60 percent of men,” KPMG said.
In addition, the survey found that UAE business leaders are prioritising “reconfiguring and securing the supply chain, advanced digitalisation, connectivity and cyber security resilience.”
However, UAE men business leaders prioritised digitalisation as a top priority, followed by “inflation-proofing capital and input costs, and improving the employee value proposition to attract and retain talent,” the report said.
The report also showed that UAE female leaders are “confident of their business prospects as they pursue aggressive M&A strategies, with 74 percent saying new partnerships will be critical to continue the rapid pace of digital transformation post pandemic.”
Over half the UAE women business leaders also felt their companies must be “more transparent” when it comes to equal pay.
“As many as 82 percent believe a lot more needs to be done to build gender diversity on boards and management levels, and 62 percent experienced stereotyping and bias in their day-to-day work,” the report said adding that UAE’s sweeping measures to increase female representation in C-suite is encouraging.
“Women leaders bring a new dimension to the workforce with their empathy-driven management style and people-centric leadership. It is enormously encouraging to see that UAE female leaders are confident of their company’s future growth prospects as they take on pandemic-induced challenges head-on. Women leaders have also displayed pragmatism when it comes to technology and innovation – which will prove valuable to the business as they navigate challenges that lie ahead,” KPMG Lower Gulf partner and head of people & change Marketa Simkova said.
The report also showed a difference between male and female business leaders in terms of ESG challenges, as 29 percent of women expressed the most pressing issue was the lack of an accepted global framework for measuring and disclosing ESG performance, compared to just 5 percent of men.
“Encouragingly, both men and women leaders expressed their desire to tackle diversity issues. About two-thirds of both men and women in the UAE agreed that stakeholders will continue to increasingly scrutinise companies’ performance on social issues, including employee diversity and inclusion,” the report said.
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