A new survey by Next Big Futures has found that nearly three-quarters of telecoms engineers in Dubai are women.
The survey was conducted between October 5 and October 13, with a sample of nearly 9,000 people aged between 18 and 50 in the UAE.
The report’s authors, who included Dubai’s head of IT for telecoms, Abdulaziz Khashoggi, said the survey’s results were “pretty remarkable”.
The survey results were surprising to Khashogs group, as he said: “We expected that there would be a gender gap, but it is the opposite.
The gender gap is the largest for the top jobs in the industry.”
The survey found that 51 per cent of respondents were female compared to 32 per cent men.
Khashoggis team were surprised by the findings, as they said: “[The] gender gap has been very significant for a number of years.
And we have been following trends, because we are also watching trends in the field.””
This is the first time we have seen the gender gap of a telecoms engineer in Dubai.
I am sure there are many more women in this field.
But we have a very good data set that we can analyse in order to see where the gaps are.
The data is available on the website of the Dubai Institute of Technology, where we are working,” he added.
The study found that, across the top 20 industry jobs, only 14 per cent were held by women.
Only 14 per per cent held senior roles in the top 30 industries.
Only 12 per cent had at least one female member of staff.
A large majority of the respondents said that they were comfortable with the status quo in their field.
“This does not surprise us.
This is a sector that is working very hard to create jobs and bring women to the top job positions.
The current government has created a number with great responsibility, and the industry is moving in the right direction,” Khashogis group added.”
The gender gap in this industry is still very large and the sector needs to keep moving forward to create more jobs for women and create a better environment for women,” Khishoggi said.