Over the past several years, the share of women in the UAE’s workforce has risen significantly. In 2025, the labor force participation rate for women in the UAE was 53%, an almost 5-point jump from 10 years ago when the rate was 48.2% and an over 30-point jump from 1990 when it was only 29.3%. In the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region, where the female labor force participation rate is 20%, among the lowest in the world, the UAE is a remarkable outlier. In addition to a significant portion of expatriate women working in the country, the UAE has made great strides in increasing the national female labor force participation rate through federal mandates, legal reforms, and supportive policies across the public and private sectors.
The number of women who own businesses in the UAE has also been increasing, reflecting how the country’s leadership has been encouraging entrepreneurship and how government-led programs have made it easier to start a business. In 2010, 11,300 Emirati women were running businesses. By 2021, that number rose to 25,000. And, in the first half of 2024 alone, 2,000 Emirati women founded new businesses. These statistics reflect the number of Emirati women who own businesses—foreign-born women likely increase this number by thousands.
Despite these gains, the overall percentage of female entrepreneurs still lags behind parity. According to a report from the Emirates Businesswomen Council, women made up only 18% of all entrepreneurs in the UAE in 2024. Yet evidence suggests women have strong desires to start their own businesses; a 2025 Mastercard study found that 84% of women in the UAE were considering starting their own business. So what accounts for the gap between women who want to start businesses and those who do?
The UAE has made it easier to start businesses, and in the process has removed many administrative barriers that prevented women from doing so. However, women still report facing additional hurdles, such as bias against female founders and lack of access to capital and other forms of funding, in spite of the government-led programs that do facilitate access to capital, which do not exist in other countries in the region.
Courtesy of author
The Financing Gap
One of the most well-documented barriers is the lack of funding and access to capital for women seeking to start businesses. In 2024, female founders only received 1.2% of venture capital funding in the Middle East.
A female founder based in the UAE explained that venture capital’s lack of funding for female founders stems from a male-dominated industry and unconscious bias against women. “I’m pretty out there with my ideas, and the kind of pushback I got from VCs was a little interesting. They were completely dismissive,” she said. She cross-checked the comments she received in pitch meetings with her male colleagues. “They were shocked by the kinds of comments that I used to get.” She found fundraising so challenging that after a year and a half, she pivoted her business model from a product into full services.
She added that the “values” venture capital seeks to fund may be different from the business models that women are establishing. “Do I want to burn myself to build a maybe unicorn business, or am I just happy with a successful, profitable business? I think a lot of females end up in profitable businesses that are sustainable—which are not VC friendly. But ultimately they are more successful in maintaining themselves as businesses, but they are not generational wealth businesses,” she said.
Shamim Kassabawi, the founder and CEO of Play:Date, reflected this sentiment in an interview with StartUpScene:
“It’s more challenging to be taken seriously, especially when you have a parenting app. How do you explain this to an older male when they decide who they are going to invest in? They’re just never going to get it.”
While there are programs in the UAE that support female founders, the majority of them offer support in the form of grants or mentorship—not equity financing. Most recently, RAKBANK, in partnership with a network of female founders called CrunchMoms, launched “She Means Business.” This program addresses the knowledge gap and the red tape associated with starting a business by providing educational resources and a digital banking account; it does not offer opportunities or ease access to financing itself. Other initiatives that did aim to solve the financing problem, such as the Women Angel Investors’ Network, have lapsed, leaving a significant gap in opportunities for women to pursue funding outside traditional paths.
How to Affect Change
When asked how to affect change in the financing landscape for women entrepreneurs, the women I interviewed offered a few solutions that tackle the financing issue and other systemic barriers that prevent them from pursuing their personal and professional goals.
One female founder said she thinks that more women in leadership and decision-making positions will cause change to trickle down.
“I picture more women in boards and in positions where they can make financial decisions…That would move the needle a lot because we know we live in a world that is driven by capital.”
Another woman working in the banking industry agreed, saying that “the more women you bring into leadership roles with the correct support, the better the change will be driven.”
Multiple women said success looks different for each and every working woman. One woman said “when I look at success for me, it would be having a great career but then also having work-life balance and feeling happy with the healthy lifestyle I built for myself. If I look at a friend of mine, success to her means being a mom that is present and then running her side gig.” She added that it is the current system that does not offer flexible working options that holds women, many of whom have caregiving responsibilities, back.
“I do know a lot of women who are put in a very tough situation where they have to choose between their family and their career or their wellbeing…I think women should also have the opportunity to take part-time jobs so they still can add value and achieve their career dreams while also achieving personal goals.”
Another female founder is already enacting these policies in her company. In her company, “women are allowed to go to pick up their kids. If you can’t start early because your baby gave you a terrible night, that’s absolutely okay…We offer moms flexible working hours. We offer freelance gigs for moms that just want to do morning shifts.” She said that it is the founders’ responsibility to cultivate a positive working environment for women. She hopes that this will cause a “domino effect” and impact the entire working ecosystem.
In the UAE, perceived socioeconomic barriers are not holding women back. There is evidence that when offered the opportunity and provided with the proper resources to start a business, women thrive. They are building businesses as varied as femtech firms that address the gap in medical care for postpartum mothers to a billion-dollar beauty and makeup company that has gone global. It is no longer enough to integrate women into existing systems. Changes in the financing system and the culture and policies of work are now essential to ensure that every woman can achieve their own, individualized vision of success.
This blog post is a shortened extract of an upcoming book chapter for “What Happens When Women Work” to be published by Georgetown University Press.