United Arab Emirates, 14 September 2022: Emirates Global Aluminium, the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside of oil and gas, today became a signatory to the United Nations’ Women’s Empowerment Principles. EGA is committed to promoting gender diversity throughout its business as well as advocating for women’s role in society.

Established by UN Women and the UN Global Compact Office, the Women’s Empowerment Principles are standards for businesses on how to promote gender diversity within the workplace, their markets, and the community, in line with the United Nations 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals.

This week marks the second anniversary of the EGA Women’s Network which continues to advocate for the empowerment and development of women within the organisation.

Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, Chief Executive Officer of EGA, said: “Heavy industry around the world has historically been male-dominated, and this must change for the good of industrial companies and society. We have already made significant progress at EGA, and our next target is to increase the proportion of women in supervisory positions at EGA in the UAE to 25 per cent by 2025, and for 15 per cent of all roles at EGA to be held by women by 2026. Becoming a signatory to the Women’s Empowerment Principles enables us to work more closely with other organisations around the world that share our focus on gender diversity and our belief that it drives business performance.”

Signing the Women’s Empowerment Principles is a public declaration by companies of support for seven key actions to drive gender diversity - ranging from establishing high-level corporate leadership for gender equality, to promoting the education, training and professional development of women, to measuring and publicly reporting progress.

Dr Mouza El Shehhi, Executive Director, UN Women Liaison Office for the GCC, said: “We are delighted to welcome EGA, the largest industrial company in the UAE outside oil and gas, as a signatory to the Women’s Empowerment Principles. This step demonstrates EGA’s firm commitment to advancing womens’ role throughout its operations. We look forward to EGA implementing the principles as it works to become an increasingly gender-diverse organisation.”

In 2020, the company launched the EGA Women’s Network, a forum for women at all levels of the company to share their achievements and challenges, and to develop and grow.

EGA is a partner of Aurora50, a UAE initiative to build the pipeline of women with the required experience for board-level positions. Nine positions on subsidiary boards within EGA have been taken by women since the start of 2021.