UAE Gender Balance Council — National Gender Balance Strategy

The UAE Gender Balance Council (GBC) was established by federal decree in 2015 — the first entity of its kind at federal level in the Gulf Cooperation Council — with a mandate to reduce the gender gap across government sectors and advance the UAE's ranking in global gender equality indices.

The GBC's National Gender Balance Strategy (Strategy 2026) sets measurable targets across four pillars: education and training, economic participation, political representation, and social empowerment, tracked through the UAE's Gender Balance Index and validated against the UNDP Gender Inequality Index (GII) and IPU Parline.

Through the SDG 5 Pledge, 71 private-sector organisations have committed to achieving 30% women in leadership by 2025–2028. The GBC presented its model at the G20 Women's Empowerment Working Group in South Africa as a replicable governance framework.

As of 2024, women hold 66% of public sector jobs and 30% of senior leadership positions; 50% of Federal National Council (FNC) seats — the only MENA country to achieve parliamentary parity; 70% of university graduates are women; and 30% of the diplomatic corps, including 9 female ambassadors, are women. The UAE advanced from 49th (2015) to 7th globally, and 1st regionally, on the UNDP GII in 2024.

The source text cautions that the FNC is a consultative, not legislative, body, so parity there confers limited direct decision-making power; private-sector compliance relies on self-reporting rather than independent audit; and gender wage-gap data is not publicly published.