DUBAI: The UAE is the best place for women to find a job, stated the latest survey by Bayt.com, and YouGov.
According to the “Working Women in the Middle East and North Africa,” more than three in four women in the UAE who provided an answer believe that job offers are based entirely on experience and qualifications, regardless of gender.
“This figure surpasses the regional average and places the UAE as the number one country when it comes to ease of finding a job for female job seekers,” the report said.
The survey sought to explore the status of working women in the MENA region by analyzing their perceptions when it comes to equality at work and looking into their motivations for employment, challenges faced at work, as well as career and life ambitions.
When asked about workplace equality, the survey revealed that more than eight in 10 respondents who answered this question believe that women in the UAE have reached the same level of workplace equality as women do in western countries.
It also stated that women in the UAE appears to be “more content with gender balance in the workplace compared with” their counterpart in other countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
“Regionally,” stated the Bayt.com survey report, “three quarters (75%) of respondents say that there is a mix of men and women working in the same workplace.
“In the UAE, this figure is almost 10 percent higher than the regional average at 84%. What’s more, a large majority (73%) of women in the UAE say they are comfortable working in a mixed gender environment, with more than half (54%) claiming to be extremely comfortable. 23% were neutral in this aspect, while only 3% said they are uncomfortable.”
It added that while three-quarters (74%) of respondents working in a mixed-gender environment report having a male manager at their current organization, nearly the same proportion (73%) have no gender-based preference for a manager.
Work hours and benefits
The report said that in the UAE, seven in 10 or 70% of the respondents report that they work almost an equal number of hours as their male colleagues, 6% believe they work less hours than their male counterparts, and only 16% said they work more hours. 8% didn’t provide an answer.
As for women-specific benefits in the workplace, the Bayt.com survey report said the top five benefits MENA respondents receive from their organizations are personal health insurance (47%), paid maternity leave (40%), company transport/transport allowance (34%), job-related training (32%), and family health insurance (23%).
“Regionally, more than two thirds (69%) of women say their organization gives them at least one month of official maternity leave. 5% said their maternity leave is less than one month and only 9% said they don’t have an official policy maternity leave. 19% of respondents did not know what the policy is,” the report said.
Meantime, almost all (89%) respondents in the UAE stated in the survey that they have at least some familiarity with the labor laws in the country, with two fifths (37%) claiming to be very familiar. “Of those who are familiar with the labor laws in the UAE, over three quarters (77%) stated that they are fair to women, at least to some extent. Only 8% think they are not fair while 15% did not provide an answer,” Bayt.com said.
Data for the “Working Women in the Middle East and North Africa” survey was recently collected online with 4,053 female respondents living in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, and the UAE.
