EGA Empowers Women with Utility Operator Appointments

By: WE Staff | Friday, 20 October 2023

Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA), the UAE's largest industrial enterprise other than oil and gas, has made history by hiring women as utility operators for the first time in the company's four-decade history. This move is part of EGA's ongoing efforts to promote gender diversity at all levels of the organization.

EGA has ambitious gender diversity targets, aiming for women to hold 15% of all posts within the company by 2026. Furthermore, they want to increase the proportion of women in supervisory positions to 25% by 2025, up from the current 20%.

Utility operators are non-supervisory frontline employees in EGA's industrial activities. The firm has been a Gulf region pioneer in hiring women for such roles, which need unique international recruitment strategies.

EGA has dedicated substantial resources to increasing gender diversity, from developing new worker accommodation strategies to building facilities for women in areas of its business that were not originally designed to accommodate them.

The CEO of Emirates Global Aluminium, Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, underlined the significance of diversity in both corporate performance and society, adding that EGA is forging new routes for women inside the firm, aligning with the UAE's larger ambitions and setting a pattern for others to follow.

In 2022, the EGA began National Training programs for women in technical jobs in industrial operations, with 11 young UAE National women enrolling throughout the year. The company presently has 75 graduate trainees, 49 of whom are women, seeking supervisory positions in corporate activities or industrial operations.

In recent years, EGA has also appointed women to nine subsidiary board seats and is a partner of Aurora50, an organization in the UAE that prepares women for board-level responsibility, therefore advancing gender diversity and equality in the workplace.