SheLeadsBusiness: Abu Dhabi's Mission for Women in Business

[Music] thank you so much for that kind introduction good afternoon your highnesses excellencies ladies and gentlemen welcome to abudhabi my name is Emma Graham and I cover the Middle East for CNBC we're based right here in Abu Dhabi and I've called this wonderful country home for many many years I'm really excited to be joined by my brilliant panelists today thank you so much for sharing the stage with me here and thank you to our hosts adgm for this fantastic conference so let's kick it off today we'll be talking about the role of women in today's economy how can we promote female inclusion in the workforce and in leadership positions both here in Abu Dhabi and globally and what can the world learn from Abu Dhabi so introducing my panel today Her Excellency Mary Mahi and of course sha aif thank you so much I'd like to kick it off with you your Excellency Abu Dhabi has seen an increase of 23 % in women-owned businesses in just 12 months staggering numbers and the UAE now ranks seventh in the world for gender equality according to the undp your Excellency we have a global audience in the room what do you think other countries can really learn from how the UAE is supporting women in business thank you so much Emma and it's so lovely to be here with you and with sha and really amazing that you're all here uh to listen to this conversation and if we think about inclusion in the the UAE in general it's really Central to the UAE it shapes our identity and it we really ensure to Value every individual and when you look at female inclusion specifically um and you think of what's this what's the secret recipe behind it um I'm a big believer that we have five key drivers one is visionary leadership uh the late Sheikh Zed um was the one who planted the seed he really was a Visionary man and really believed and advocated for female inclusion and of course uh his wife Shea Fatma uh is the one who's also a role model for us and really has taken the Legacy uh with her late husband all the way to today if you look at some of the incredible initiative so this Visionary leadership is a key ingredient if you think of the first school that His Highness built was a boy school and a girl school because he really understood that female female population in the community also is a big driver for economic and social growth so access to education is the second key driver and it's in the UAE of course it's compulsory that every girl needs to um go to school and we also really encourage stem education as well um which really reflects on some of the numbers that I will share with you in in a bit and then of course there's policies regulations that really help Drive uh female inclusion in all the sectors across all levels and then there's Partnerships and international collaboration the UAE is one of the key Global players um on the international Arena and then last but not least I think it's about empowering Role Models so for example shisa and myself are very much about we felt it the empowerment that we got and we want to share this with others and so when you look at these key drivers um Emma if we look at some of the numbers 50% of parliament in the UAE are women represented by women 30% of the cabinet are female ministers then you look at stem education more than 50% of stem graduates are women if you look at the public work Workforce more than 65% are women then we go to uh for example in very specialized areas the nuclear industry for example Baraka our peaceful nuclear power plant has over 20% women in the workforce I mean this is a global top number when you think of a special um area like nuclear and then of course space uh the Emirates uh Mars mission The Hope probe the science team was to 80% women we've also got our first astronaut Nora Al matushi as well and then of course we have people like sha leading the largest healthc care um provider here in the UAE we have uh Hannah AR ramani leading the largest bank of the UAE so the list goes on and on and this really is because of these key drivers that uh our Visionary leadership have planted it's true and as a woman I you know I'm American and British and I come here and I see we've done many interviews on CNBC many women ministers here probably more than my own country and it's just really inspiring so thank you for sharing those numbers chyon as a female CEO how can you really Drive value creation and how are you doing that in your business specifically thank you Emma so um I believe that female leadership whether they're CEOs or anyone in a position of moving or you know enabling levers to growth I believe that they have a very unique perspective and unique ability to create the right atmosphere for growth and um they have the ability to go into a room into a meeting and think of a win-win situation I've been in so many meetings where somebody comes in thinking what am I going to get out of this what is my take out of this and at the same time I've seen some phenomenal women over the years who come in thinking what's a win-win situation for everybody in this room and they get more success so they encapsulate that by creating the right environment the right atmosphere within their Workforce within their organization and that obviously pivots the organization towards growth another aspect is that women have a very unique ability to look at a problem from a different lens altogether um someone asked me um this just a couple of weeks ago and he said what does it mean to be a CEO and I said well first and foremost as a CEO your job is to hire the smartest people that you can find to surround yourself with the smartest people in the world and then as a job officio what happens is that the problems which your entire management team can't solve the smartest people that you found in the world can't solve they land on your table and imagine the impact that we can have because of the ability to look look at the problem from a completely unique perspective my personal style of of um of running you know Pure Health of our managing the immense team that we have is that it's extremely important for me to surround myself with individuals who have a vision first of all and I strike gold if that Vision their personal Vision duv Tails into the VIS vision of our organization so our organization and my personal sty we are more human driven rather than process driven within the company and your Excellency when you think about your experience here in the UAE how do you Shy's just talked about how she empowers her colleagues and and young women that work for her how do you Empower women here in the UAE so I say we need to lead by example so we need to be visible we need to be reachable um we need to share uh what challenges we face you know getting the work life balanced right having a family working it's not always easy so we need to share those those um yeah challenges but also share the solutions that we have and there's no shame and spending time with the family on the weekends you need to be able to develop your schedule around a really good work life balance because when you are strong and confident at work that's when you can actually deliver results as well and then I yeah support each other uh be there for each other be accessible I mean I know folks like shyam myself the doors open anyone that approaches us whether by email by WhatsApp by phone call we always have an open door policy saying we want to share what we went through we want to share um what kind of tips we have these are not things that we keep for ourselves we want to empower females and we actually love seeing young imatis and young women coming to us uh residents in the UA to actually say I want to but I don't know how and I'm asking you for advice I'm going to take you up on that and ask you how to achieve a work life balance because I really have not figured it out yet but um I will come to you and and hopefully you can give me some good advice anytime anytime um sha let's talk about some of the barriers because of course we're seeing so much advancement in this country and globally but there are still really significant barriers what do do you think are the biggest barriers to achieving true gender equality in the workplace so I think the biggest I mean there many barriers but I think the biggest two barriers which I would say is one uh gender stereotyping so that's that's a big barrier like you said you wanted to know more about work life balance why is it that we never ask a a male CEO about work life balance why is that question only coming to us and um and then the second is mentorship and and the right sponsor sponsorship but funnily enough Emma um I just recently read this book it's um Malcolm Gladwell if you're familiar with him and it's the book the Revenge of the Tipping Point and he identifies the number of people the number of women which are required within any setting any influential setting to have a cascading impact so for example in a committee or a task force or a board meeting how many women do you think are important say in a board of 10 people to have an impact five out of 10 no so one woman gets overwhelmed and invisible two support each other but three three form a team the magic number is three so magic number is minimum 30% we stick together pardon we stick together we stick three is a team and then you are able to make that kind of impact which is so essential in any environment for the second aspect aspect on the lack of U mentorship and sponsorship women do tend to get overwhelmed by whatever that they're doing and then maybe you know they forget that there are others who were in the position that they're or who will be in the position that they will be so they need that kind of support to get them where they are and we recognize this as an organization which is why we started the first ever the emirati women's chapter under the patronage of her highness Shea Fatma B which enables these women to get the right support to get the right sponsorship to get the right alignment of their vision for them to reach the level that they aspire to be let's talk a little bit about you spoke about stem which is something really important in this country and your background is in engineering your Excellency why do you think this is such a male dominative field is it really because as you said there's not leaders we're seeing in this field who are women and have kind of walked that path before for young women looking to get into these fields so let me say when I decided as an 18-year-old I want to become an engineer I want to become a mechanical engineer I was brought up here in the UAE and I was not afraid to go to Germany to one of the top universities in the German language and study with male counterparts mostly male counterparts and this is because the UAE gave me that confidence gave me that mindset of if you want to do do it do it and we're here to support you I got full support from the government they said of course go study in Germany I got a scholarship and I went and I started studying and believe me the looks I got a lot of the male counterparts like why would she want to be here first of all I was an international student second uh German was not my first language and then third engineering was also not an easy subject but with the confidence that I got from being in the ecosystem of the UAE having that Foundation I was able to succeed and I was able to prove to my male counterparts I'm serious about this and I want to succeed in engineering and I gained the respect from my male counterparts and I if you look now at the numbers from that same University the number of women has risen and I'm not not just saying me myself was one of the reasons but but I think we all play as females we all play a role in convincing our male counterparts who then have sisters aunts um daughters who then also get empowered the same way so I've taken this mindset Emma not only in for me in my personal life but I've taken it to my career as well so 2.0 is really being this investment platform this new investment platform that I'm leading now and it's really really all about how we enable AI how we U execute the green energy transition how we Empower communities this mindset I've taken down to the subsidiaries to the holdco level and I've got some great stories of the mining company IR Ali rashidi the CEO has taken it to a program calling women and Mining um also um there's some women near the mopani copper mine which we have that are doing Stone crushing and we're looking at what equipment we can give them to uh increase their livelihoods uh we also have Beltone as a subsidiary um in uh 2.0 Dalia I don't know if Dalia is out here corid she's an amazing female leader who has really turned around uh bellone and is doing so much on women empowerment youth inclusion so we've taken this into the subsidiaries and I just think there's so much we can do because we felt the empowerment to really amplify this uh to others I wish we had more time I think we have to continue this in Davos as you said maybe other places but really really a pleasure to have you both with me today thank you so much again a big round of applause for our panelists [Music]