:: Emirates Business Women Council ::

Businesswomen News for the month of October 2010

13 October 2010 - Sheikha Fatima awarded EwI's Values Based Leadership Award

News at UAE Businesswomen Council H.H. Sheikha Fatima Bint Mubarak, the Chairwoman of the UAE General Women's Union (GWU), and of Family Development Foundation (FDF), has been awarded the Values Based Leadership Award by the US East West Institute in recognition of her incessant and consistent support for the UAE woman.

The trophy was received on behalf of Sheikha Fatima by H.H. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Foreign Minister, in a glittering award-giving ceremony held at the Emirates Palace.

The function was attended by Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, Assistant to UAE Foreign Minister for Climate Change and Energy and CEO of Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar), John Edwin Mroz, EWI President and CEO, Haifa Al Kaylani, Founder and Chairman of the Arab International Women's Forum, and a crowd of Arab and foreign diplomats.

Addressing the attendees, Sheikh Abdullah said ''It is a great honour for me to receive the prestigious award from such a world renown organisation on behalf of my mother, the Mother of the Nation, who has been very close to the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan''.

He affirmed that the honour is a tribute to what Sheikha Fatima is doing and an appreciation of the progress the UAE woman has reached.

John Edwin Mroz, EWI President and CEO, said the achievements Sheikha Fatima has made is an embodiment of the leadership values as she recognised the importance of advancement of woman as a prerequisite for the progress of the nation.

He also acknowledged the vital role of Sheikh Zayed and his special care and attention for the woman issues.

He indicated that Sheikha Fatima had rolled out a massive programme for learning girls because she views illiteracy as the first stumbling block before the path to progress.

He went on to note that Sheikha Fatima's role has gone beyond the UAE borders to the Arab and international arenas as she didn't forget the sufferings of the peoples in Palestine, Iraq, Pakistan and Kosovo. She, he added, carried out several humanitarian projects through the UAE Red Crescent Authority.

He added that Sheikha Fatima is also working through the FDF to take care of woman and children and advance their issues without compromising values and culture of the local family.

The FDF is offering through 17 centres educational and sports programmes at affordable fees.
The East West Institute is a global think-and-do tank that devises innovative solutions to pressing security concerns and mobilizes networks of individuals, institutions and nations to implement these solutions. EWI was founded in 1980 when John Edwin Mroz and Ira Wallach set out to bridge divides across the Iron Curtain. With vast networks in political, military, and business establishments in the U.S., Europe, and the former Soviet Union, EWI quickly established a reputation as a trusted convener with the ability to maintain lines of communication across divides when official channels failed to do so.

The East West Institute is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with offices in New York, Brussels and Moscow.

12 October 2010 - UAE Women Surpass men in literacy rate.

The literacy rate for women is higher than men and their increased participation in the labour force has narrowed the gender gap in UAE, said a report published in a local newspaper.

According to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2010, the labour force participation rate of women has increased from 41 per cent in 2009 to 43 this year while the wage gap narrowed relative to the $40,000 maximum value for men.

Emirates 24/7, a web based English-language newspaper while quoting the report has said that there are small gains in primary, secondary and tertiary enrolment data, and the proportion of women holding ministerial level positions has increased.

All these factors helped the country to attain top position in the Arab world in gender equality and also pushed the country's ranking up by nine places worldwide, the report said.
According to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2010, the UAE remained top Arab country in equality between men and women, lifting its ranking to 103 this year from 112 last year in a survey of 134 countries. The UAE was followed by Kuwait with a ranking of 105, Bahrain (110), Lebanon (116), Qatar (117), Oman (122), Egypt (125) and Saudi Arabia (129).

The UAE was ranked among the high-income countries with per capita income of $12,196 or more.
The report said that Bahrain's improvements are mainly driven by significant increase in the proportion of women legislators, senior officials and managers and the proportion of women holding ministerial level positions. The highest-ranking economies of the region have invested large amounts of resources in increasing women's education levels - in many, the tertiary education enrolment rates of women are higher than those of men - and these countries will now need to better integrate these women into the economy to reap the benefits of this investment.
Saudi Arabia's performance over the last five years puts it among the highest climbers of the 114 countries that have been included in the Report since 2006.

During 2009-10, the labour force participation rate of women has climbed from 20 per cent to 22 per cent in the Kingdom, the perception of the wage gap for similar work has improved, literacy rates have improved and women's enrolment in tertiary education also increased from 35 per cent to 37 per cent. But the kingdom remained the lowest-ranking country in the region on political empowerment, with the lowest possible score of zero.

The report showed that Nordic countries Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden continue to demonstrate the greatest equality between men and women.