United Arab Emirates, 8 March 2024: The Women’s Network of Emirates Global Aluminium, the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside oil and gas, hosted an International Women’s Day summit to discuss the progress of gender diversity in industry at EGA’s headquarters in Al Taweelah.

The event brought together women from leading organisations in the UAE including ADNOC, Ardian Limited, CCI France UAE, EDF Energy, ENOC, Ducab, Mastercard, Miral, MENALAC, Nama Women Advancement, Siemens, Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi and WiSER.

The group discussed collaboration opportunities to advocate for the empowerment of women in the workplace in line with this year’s International Women’s Day theme, ‘Inspire Inclusion’.

EGA employs more than 470 women in the UAE, including 160 women in operations. EGA has set goals to increase the proportion of women in supervisory positions to 25 per cent by 2025, compared to over 22 per cent at the end of 2023, and 15 per cent of all positions by 2026.

The majority of EGA’s current graduate trainees are women. Some 20 per cent of participants in EGA’s National Training programmes, which prepare high school leavers for technical and administrative roles, are women just over a year after the company opened these programmes to women for the first time.

Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, Chief Executive Officer of Emirates Global Aluminium, said: “Promoting gender diversity is a priority for EGA and is part of our bold aspiration to become a talent driven organisation. We have made significant progress but there is still more to do. Our commitment to achieving our targets will contribute to the UAE’s long-standing national objectives to increase the participation of women in the economy and society.”

Last year, EGA launched the Challenger Programme in partnership with Aurora50, which brings together leading industrial companies to make quicker progress on promoting gender diversity by addressing shared practical challenges.

EGA is a signatory to the United Nations’ Women’s Empowerment Principles and committed to promoting gender diversity throughout its business as well as advocating for women’s role in industry and society.

The EGA Women’s Network was launched in 2020, and provides women at all levels of the company a platform for mutual professional development support.