Digital Skills and Workforce Gender Distribution in the UAE

Considering gender in the workforce, the UAE landscape is dominated by males, largely due to more men migrating to the UAE than women in search of work. Some economists we spoke to also referred ot the fact that there are many male dominated industries that are large-scale employers in the country, including oil & gas, construction and real estate development, engineering and tech as well. However, female workforce participation is growing; in the last decade, female representation has increased from 23% (2011) to 28.5% (2021).

It is notable though, that within the group of workforce members that have “disruptive digital skills” – which is the highest growing skill set category in the region – women representation is below the UAE’s average workforce gender distribution. This points to the fact that in the future, the UAE’s tech industry will likely remain a maledominated workforce unless more conscious action is taken by both the public and private sectors to support the participation of women in the tech industry and the wider digital economy as a whole.