DUBAI, 10 January 2022 – Equalising access to opportunities for women throughout the global labour market has the power to reap huge economic and social benefits worldwide, experts agreed as Expo 2020 Dubai’s Travel and Connectivity Week continued, with a dedicated panel at the Women’s Pavilion on Monday (10 January).
“What we’ve seen is when we get women involved in business, they tend to export more than their male counterparts,” said Cristina Falcone, Vice President of Public Affairs, UPS Europe. Falcone was joined by Hind Alowais, Senior Vice President, Participant Management at Expo 2020 Dubai, who moderated the ‘All online? Not Yet: Closing the Digital Gender Gap’ panel.
Falcone added: “We’ve also seen stats from the [World Trade Organisation] that between two and 20 per cent of offline [SMEs] export, whereas 97 per cent of internet-abled [SMEs] export. So, we need to get all segments of the population engaged.”
Joining proceedings virtually, Falcone cited UPS’s ongoing efforts through its Women’s Exporters Programme, a collaboration with the International Trade Centre (ITC) that has so far helped more than 15,000 female entrepreneurs worldwide overcome local and regional challenges to expand into global markets.
She added: “Another example as a stat is that when women succeed in business, they tend to re-invest a higher proportion of their profits back into the community – this has an effect on poverty, nutrition for children, and local economic health. So, continuously reporting back on why we’re doing it and then showcasing the successes have helped us tremendously in advancing this programme.”
Fellow panellist Asma Shabab, Senior Manager, Innovation Strategy at Accenture, said: “It’s not just about diversity or inclusion – it’s about economic value. If you don’t provide women with access, there’s going to be a lot of value that’s left on the table.”
Shabab cited a 2018 IMF report that claimed closing the gender gap could increase GDP by 35 per cent on average for the bottom half of all countries within its sample, as well as the USD 28 trillion that management consultant McKinsey & Company says could be added to global annual GDP by 2025, if women play an identical role to men in labour markets.
She explained: “This narrative that there is economic value that is left on the table will resonate with every CEO, with every person, who is interested in creating value, which are all new businesses.”
Travel and Connectivity Week, the sixth Theme Week in Expo’s Programme for People and Planet, runs until 15 January and features a range of events, including a three-hour tech innovation session titled ‘Age of Disruption’ (12 January), as well as ‘Cultures in Conversation: A Cloud is Nobody’s’ (15 January).
