Across the technology landscape, women continue to shape innovation with resilience, curiosity, and vision. Their diverse perspectives—shaped by unique journeys, challenges, and triumphs, remind us that progress in tech is driven not only by expertise, but by the voices that dare to redefine what’s possible. This collection of insights amplifies those voices, celebrating the power of women who lead, inspire, and transform the future of technology.

International Women’s Day Comments

Sumaiya Muhammad, Sr. Marketing Specialist at Alteryx –

“My professional journey has evolved across hardware, software, telecom, and now data automation at Alteryx. Working across these domains has strengthened my adaptability and deepened my understanding of how data drives real business value. According to Alteryx research, 48% of leaders plan to increase spending on AI infrastructure and tools, signalling how rapidly enterprise priorities are shifting and how significant it is for women to build confidence in data and AI. A challenge I have consistently faced is navigating constant change in an industry where innovation cycles move quickly. I have realised that continuous learning and investing in upskilling is crucial in this industry.

This International Women’s Day, I encourage aspiring women professionals to step forward boldly and actively shape the future of technology.”

Merhan Gaballah, Construction Technology & PropTech Consultant at PlanRadar –

Throughout my career in construction technology and PropTech, my journey has evolved from commercial roles into strategic advisory positions supporting digital transformation across the GCC.

One of the key challenges has been building credibility in traditionally male-dominated environments, where technical leadership is often predefined. Overcoming this required resilience, preparation, and consistently delivering measurable impact.

Today, I see strong momentum for women in tech. Digital transformation is redefining leadership, placing greater value on collaboration, adaptability, and data-driven thinking—areas where diverse perspectives are essential.

On International Women’s Day, I hope we move beyond recognition toward sustained inclusion, where women are not highlighted as exceptions, but empowered as equal contributors shaping the future of technology.

Alexandra Gartrell, VP and EMEA Legal Lead at Cloudera –

“This year’s International Women’s Day theme, Give to Gain, is a reminder that investing in women’s advancement at work delivers returns for everyone. Diverse teams broaden talent pipelines, improve decision-making, and build workplaces where people are more engaged and more likely to stay.

AI systems inherit the assumptions of the environments that build them. When development teams skew toward a single demographic, bias doesn’t only show up in datasets. It can also appear in which problems are prioritised, how success is defined, which edge cases are tested, and what risks are accepted. In the agentic era, autonomy raises the stakes: small weaknesses in data, design, or oversight can be amplified once decisions are made at scale.

As AI becomes embedded across core business functions, coding ability is no longer the sole marker of technical contribution. Engineers need business acumen, communication skills, and the ability to collaborate across functions because responsible AI depends on context and judgment, not just models.

True inclusion means having diverse voices shape product direction and decision rights and not just representation in organisational charts. Practically, this means auditing datasets for representation gaps, testing models for unequal outcomes, stress-testing edge cases, and involving a diverse panel of human reviewers throughout the AI lifecycle.

According to Cloudera’s WLIT 2025 report, 91% of women leaders in the Middle East remain optimistic that gender equality in AI leadership will improve within five years. When women are given resources, opportunities, and authority in AI development, organisations gain better AI systems that work for everyone. In the agentic era, diversity in leadership and oversight should be treated as part of AI risk management.

Organizations that formalize cross-functional approaches, create transition pathways, and recognize emotional intelligence as a technical capability will build better AI and advance gender equity.”

Fatma Al Naggar, Senior Relationship Manager, Saxo Bank MENA –

“In times of uncertainty, women have consistently proven to be natural problem-solvers and stabilisers, leading their homes, workplaces, and communities with empathy, adaptability, and a profound sense of responsibility.
While women naturally take on the role of emotional anchors due to their deep attunement to the needs of others, it is crucial that providing this support never comes at the expense of their own well-being. Sustainable resilience requires setting boundaries, prioritizing self-care, and establishing personal rituals that help maintain a positive mindset and focus on what can be controlled amidst the external noise of today’s fast-paced digital world.

As women progress in their careers and redefine leadership across industries, they are bringing a more collaborative, empathetic, and purpose-driven approach that prioritizes transparency and inclusivity over traditional authority. In highly competitive fields, particularly male-dominated sectors like finance and technology, technical expertise may open doors, but it is the mastery of soft skills such as emotional intelligence, relationship building, and strategic thinking that sustains advancement and leadership credibility.

Furthermore, living and working in a multicultural environment like the UAE significantly amplifies this professional growth. The country’s strong emphasis on safety, opportunity, and diversity provides an unparalleled space where women from all backgrounds can pursue their ambitions with confidence, learn from diverse perspectives, and foster inclusive, globally minded innovation.

Yet, achieving true gender equity demands ongoing progress to ensure equal access to leadership roles, mentorship, and career development, while continually challenging outdated perceptions about women’s roles. An ideal workplace must actively promote equality, respect, equal pay, and flexible work options, empowering every woman to reach her full potential.

On this International Women’s Day, my message to all women, especially young girls carving their own paths, is to believe in your abilities, embrace curiosity, and never hesitate to pursue challenging opportunities. By recognizing our inherent strength, owning our expertise with authenticity, and leading with resilience, we can collectively shape a more inclusive and high-performing future for our communities and industries.”

Laura Heisman, CMO, Dynatrace –

The rise of AI isn’t just a call for women to adapt, it’s an opportunity for women to lead. With an estimated 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 yet to be created, AI is not only reshaping roles, but entire career journeys. Traditional paths are breaking down, opening doors for women to step into emerging opportunities – and redefining what’s possible for soon-to-be graduates and school-aged girls alike.

This is our moment to help define the future of work and pave the way for generations to come. But progress isn’t automatic. Without intentional action and human connection, women risk being sidelined in this transformation. Learning, experimenting, and getting comfortable with AI isn’t optional. It’s how we remain active participants in shaping what comes next.

The future will be shaped by what and who we invest in today. When we support women and future generations through mentorship, intentional recruiting, training, and shared learning, we don’t just advance opportunity – we build better technology, stronger businesses, and a more inclusive future. It starts with choosing to learn, experiment, and grow with AI. That is the spirit of this year’s International Women’s Day focus, where we “give to gain.”

Dr Heba El-Shimy, Assistant Professor (Data and AI), Heriot-Watt University Dubai

At its core, the term “digital transformation” refers to the systematic integration of digital technologies into how organisations operate, deliver value, and interact with their customers. McKinsey defines it as the rewiring of an organisation to continuously deploy technology at scale, while IBM frames it as a business strategy that modernises processes, products, and operations through digital tools. The common thread in both definitions is that digital transformation is not an IT upgrade — it is a structural change in how decisions are made, how services reach end users, and how entire industries reorganise around data and automation.

On that front, the GCC, and particularly the UAE, have moved far beyond the planning phase. The UAE ranked first globally in government AI readiness in 2024 (Oxford Insights) and ninth in the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Index 2025, up from eighteenth in 2017. Over 90% of the UAE’s government services are now digital. Saudi Arabia has digitised 98% of its public services and has climbed to sixth worldwide in the UN E-government Development Index. With the IMF estimating that full digitalisation across MENA could unlock $1.6 trillion in long-term economic gains, the scale of ambition is matched by the scale of opportunity.

One of the region’s most significant and underutilised strategic advantages lies in its female STEM talent. In the UAE, 61% of STEM graduates are women. 77% of computer science students are women, compared to under 20% in the UK, France, and Canada. Bahrain was ranked first globally for female digital skills training and STEM education by the Economist’s Internet Inclusive Report. In Saudi Arabia, the share of women in communications and IT has risen from 7% in 2017 to 35%, exceeding the European average. The GCC is producing technically trained women at rates that most developed economies would find difficult to replicate.

When this talent reaches positions of genuine authority, the results are striking. Ebtesam Almazrouei, an inspiring Emirati, serves as Executive Director, Acting Chief AI Researcher, and Founder of the AI Cross Center Unit (AICCU) at the Technology Innovation Institute in Abu Dhabi (TII), where she oversees the development of the Falcon large language model and chairs the UN AI for Good Impact Initiative. Deemah AlYahya, a Saudi tech diplomat and digital economy expert, became the first Saudi woman to head an international organisation as Secretary-General of the Digital Cooperation Organization (DCO). These are appointments based on capability and merit for women making consequential technical and strategic decisions.

What these examples point to is a broader principle. In a conversation with Global Woman Leader Magazine on the topic of humanising digital transformation at scale, Juliana Rios, CIO of LATAM Airlines Group, made an observation that resonates here: that digital transformation succeeds not when organisations deploy technology, but when the people building those systems deeply understand the context in which they operate. Her argument — that technology must be shaped by human understanding, not just technical specification — speaks directly to what women engineers, data scientists, and domain experts bring to the table. The women leading AI research, engineering cloud architectures, and developing diagnostic algorithms in the GCC are not contributing a complementary perspective to someone else’s technical work. They are doing the technical work, and their fluency across domains like healthcare, policy, and data science is precisely what humanises digital systems at the point of design, not as an afterthought.

Digital transformation demands more than deployment, it demands that the systems themselves are technically sound, contextually appropriate, and fair. Women in the GCC are contributing across all three. They are training large language models, architecting cloud migration strategies, developing computer vision systems for clinical diagnostics, and writing the algorithms behind smart city platforms. They are also, critically, among the researchers identifying and correcting bias in AI systems — work that has direct consequences for whether these technologies serve populations equitably or replicate existing blind spots at scale. When an AI hiring tool penalises candidates because its training data reflected a historically male-dominated applicant pool, or when a facial recognition system performs significantly worse on women than on men, the failure is not one of intention, it is a failure of team composition. The engineers who catch these flaws are those whose own experience makes the flaws visible. The composition of the teams building these systems is not a secondary consideration. It directly shapes the technical integrity, fairness, and ultimately the adoption of the technology.

The GCC is better positioned than most regions to act on this, because the foundation has already been laid. The region has invested heavily in digital infrastructure and in a STEM education system that produces technically trained women at globally exceptional rates. It has also produced cases where that talent has operated at the highest technical and strategic levels and delivered measurably, as the examples in this article illustrate. What makes the GCC’s position distinctive is that these are not isolated stories; they are consistent with the direction the region has already chosen.

From where I sit, teaching computer science, particularly AI, to the next generation of engineers in Dubai, the momentum is real and the talent coming through is exactly what this transformation requires.

Dr Heba El-Shimy, Assistant Professor (Data and AI), Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University Dubai

Healthy societies, institutions, or teams operate best when comprising a healthy balance between males and females. A landmark study by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) with the Technical University of Munich uncovered that companies with above-average gender diversity generated around 45% of their revenues from innovative products, compared to only 26% as innovative revenues for companies with below-average gender diversity. These findings are echoed in the scientific field. A 2025 study by Nature analyzing 3.7 million US patents revealed that inventing teams with higher participation of women are associated with increased novelty in patents. Research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology confirms that teams with more women exhibit significantly higher collective intelligence and are more effective at solving difficult problems. These studies tell one clear story: that participation of women in innovative and scientific fields is not only desirable — it is a strategic national asset.

UAE Women In STEM

The UAE holds one of the world’s most striking gender profiles in STEM education. According to UNESCO data, 61% of graduates in STEM fields are Emirati women, surpassing the Arab world average of 57% and nearly doubling the global average of 35%. At government universities, 56% of graduates are women, and they represent over 80% of graduates in natural sciences, mathematics, and statistics.

These numbers have translated into accomplishments that have captured global attention. The Emirates Mars Mission — the Hope Probe — was developed by a team of scientists that was 80% women, selected based on merit. Noora Al Matrooshi became the first Arab woman to complete NASA astronaut training in 2024. The Chair of the UAE Space Agency and the mission’s Deputy Project Manager is a woman: H.E. Sarah Al Amiri. At Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), female enrolment reached 28% within five years and continues to grow. Women’s talents are being recognised — this is not a mere future ambition, but a present reality.

Scientific Research As An Engine For National Strategy

The ‘We the UAE 2031’ vision sets ambitious goals: doubling GDP to AED 3 trillion, generating AED 800 billion in non-oil exports, and positioning the country as a global hub for innovation, artificial intelligence, and entrepreneurship. The UAE’s rise to the 30^th place in WIPO Global Innovation Index 2025 signals a steady pace towards achieving the UAE 2031 vision. Sustaining this ascent requires continued investment into human capital to produce research output, intellectual property, and commercial innovation at a pace matching the ambition. This is precisely where women scientists become indispensable.

Women scientists are already major contributors to the seven priority sectors identified in the UAE National Innovation Strategy: renewable energy, transport, education, health, technology, water, and space. UAE women scientists are research-active in climate science, sustainable materials, clean energy systems, AI-driven diagnostics in healthcare, and environmental monitoring — all crucial sciences that the national development commitments depend on.

Knowledge economies are built on the ability to generate, apply, and commercialize research locally — reducing the dependence on imported technologies and creating self-sustaining innovation ecosystems. When a researcher at UAEU develops patented computational methods for drug design, as Dr. Alya Arabi recently did with four patents spanning AI-driven pharmaceutical development and medical devices, that is intellectual property created on UAE soil, addressing healthcare challenges that would otherwise require imported solutions. When women scientists at Masdar City and Khalifa University advance research in solar energy systems, carbon captured materials, or sustainable desalination, they are producing foundational science that the UAE’s Net-Zero 2050 Strategy depends upon.

Masdar’s WiSER (Women in Sustainability, Environment and Renewable Energy) programme has graduated professional young women from over 30 nationalities, closing the gap in the global sustainability workforce. In healthcare, women scientists are active in the areas where AI, genomics, and precision medicine converge. The Emirati Genome Programme, M42’s Omics Center of Excellence, and the Abu Dhabi Stem Cells Center all represent domains where locally produced research can reduce the country’s reliance on imported diagnostics and therapeutics.

From these examples, it is clear that women scientists’ and researchers’ contributions are a central pillar of the national R&D ecosystem.

A Regional And Global Perspective

The UAE’s experience is instructive for the wider region. Across the Arab world, up to 57% of STEM graduates are women, yet the MENA region maintains one of the lowest female workforce participation rates globally at 19%. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 has made notable progress, with women’s workforce participation reaching 36.2% and women now comprising 40.9% of the Kingdom’s researchers. The challenge across the GCC and MENA is consistent: converting educational attainment into sustained professional participation and research output. Globally, only one in three researchers is a woman, and parity in engineering, mathematics, and computer science is not projected until 2052. UNESCO’s 2026 International Day of Women and Girls in Science theme — “From Vision to Impact” — captures this urgency well.

The Way Forward: From Vision To Impact

As an academic working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and healthcare research in Dubai, I witness this potential daily — in students who arrive with rigour and ambition, in researchers producing work that stands alongside the best globally, and in a national ecosystem that increasingly treats women’s scientific participation as a strategic priority rather than a social courtesy. But policies alone do not produce innovation. What produces innovation is funding, access to facilities, clear pathways from research to commercialisation, and the recognition that a woman scientist publishing a patent in the UAE is building national capability in exactly the same way as the infrastructure projects that make headlines.

Sustained commitment is key — from governments, institutions, and the private sector — to ensure that every woman scientist in this region has the funding, the platforms, and the pathways to convert her research into national impact. When women scientists thrive, nations innovate faster. The UAE understands this. Now it must ensure the rest of the ecosystem does too.