Robust STEM Pathways Not Tokenism Vital For Gender Equality Say UAE Executives

Robust STEM Pathways Not Tokenism Vital For Gender Equality Say UAE Executives

Imagine this – you enter an advanced manufacturing facility making composites for the aviation industry. The factory has been built from scratch little over a decade ago and already has a diverse range of global clients from Airbus to Boeing BA . Its regeneration program has seen the local economy benefit and one look around its manufacturing facilities reveals that nearly 90% of its engineering workforce is female and local. If it sounds incredible and too farfetched, well it isn't! The company is called Strata. Its manufacturing site for global clients is in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates, founded in 2009; and yes its workforce is nearly 90% female and local Emirati. While giving accolades where they are due, big question for the manufacturing and industrial world is how to go about replicating this level of diversity and operational success or at least part of it, elsewhere in the Emirates and indeed the world. At the recently concluded 2021 Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit (GMIS), Badr Al-Olama, head of the summit's organizing committee and a former CEO of Strata, told me how the company found its gender diversity calling could be a model that has clear potential for replication elsewhere