The UAE Cabinet’s new visa regime represents a structural shift that will transform the local labour market.
The extension of the golden visa and introduction of green visas will be a stimulus to attract more businesses to the region, creating more jobs, and opening new opportunities in a wider range of occupational sectors.
As a leader on gender equality in the region, it’s not surprising that the country’s recent changes will help to further boost economic activity among women.
The new opportunities for residency and employment neatly overlap with other recent visa reforms to create an ecosystem that will enable women to better balance family commitments with the advancement of their career.
Employment opportunities
As new businesses enter the market, a war on talent, wage inflation, and the shift in working culture prompted by the pandemic will mean employers increasingly looking to flexible approaches in sourcing and managing human resources.
This means more scope for freelance and remote work, enabling women to better fit business activity around their responsibilities in the home.
With the extension of the golden visa to creative sectors such arts and culture, there will also be more opportunities for women to secure long-term residency through their existing employment.
Career development
The five-year residency option granted by the new green visa for skilled employees will give businesses more certainty around workforce retention and allow individuals to develop a longer-term career path.
This additional time to build professional momentum can help lessen the impact for women moving into or out of a career break.
The extended visa duration should also encourage more businesses to make a commitment to the continual professional development of their employees.
This will empower women to formalise their professional credentials, helping to ease workplace re-entry.
Entrepreneurship
Women already make up nearly half of the UAE’s SME sector and the green visa for freelancers and self-employed individuals will encourage more female entrepreneurs to explore independent working.
With no requirement for a sponsor for either category, this option will give women the professional freedom and flexibility to define their own pace of work and business growth.
It also allows professional talent to move to the UAE as freelancers and enables more female employees to explore the opportunity of a side hustle that may evolve into freelancing or entrepreneurship in the future.
With the scale of start-up investment pouring into the country, the UAE has become a land of opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Work-life balance
The new green visas, coupled with the remote working visa introduced in 2021, establishes a career framework that can better promote work-life balance.
The system supports the increasingly popular digital nomad lifestyle, which particularly suits women who have home, care, or other responsibilities in different parts of the world.
The regime also facilitates a five-year multi-entry tourist visa and a special entry permit, allowing for extended visits from family and friends who can lend support to working parents.
Long-term planning
The new extended visa terms mean that, for the first time, families can establish a long-term UAE residency plan.
Employees, entrepreneurs and freelancers can enter and work in the country without the need for a sponsor. The extension of the visa grace period ensures that anyone losing their job has sufficient time to find other opportunities.
With child sponsorship being extended to 25 years old for male family members and indefinitely for unmarried daughters, mothers will no longer have to curtail their career to move on with their dependents, and the death of the primary visa holder will not affect the status of the other family members, who can continue to stay in the UAE for the remaining visa tenure.
What’s more, with the earlier announcement of a retirement visa, there’s a real opportunity to establish lifelong residency in the UAE, or at the very least, to plan for a family’s future with much greater certainty, making the UAE a more attractive place to call home.
Alice Weightman, founder and CEO of The Work Crowd and Hanson Search.
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