The Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) and UN Women Egypt organised two seminars on gender equality and workplace improvement in the last week of June.

Hisham Ramadan, assistant chairman of the FRA, and Gielan Al-Messiri, deputy country representative for UN Women Egypt, participated in the seminars.

In his opening remarks, Ramadan urged the non-banking financial sector to prioritise incorporating the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs) into their strategies and to review the new global trends that emphasise the significance of compatibility with sustainability and compliance standards relating to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures.

Ramadan further stated to the members of the non-banking sector that, as a result of the authority's decisions regarding women's representation on boards of directors, the number of women on boards in the companies supervised by the authority has increased over the previous two years.

In 2019, the FRA supervised a total of 838 enterprises, 471 of which lacked a female representative on their boards of directors (56 per cent).

Since then, the percentage of women's representation has increased substantially, resulting in a decrease in the number of companies with all-male boards to 177 in 2021, or 20 per cent of the total 892 enterprises supervised by the authority in 2021.

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Ramadan also mentioned that the FRA is a pioneer in implementing sustainability concepts, noting that there are two women on the FRA's Board of Directors.

Additionally, the authorities have developed an ethical charter to avoid harassment and foster a work climate that gives equal opportunity for both genders. It also adopts a sustainability approach with its suppliers, which is based on the suppliers' promise to deliver environmentally friendly products that support gender equality in the workplace.

This series of seminars was organised within the context of the authority's implementation of the work plan that had been agreed upon with UN Women as part of the authority's adoption of the (WEPs), encouraging non-banking financial institutions to sign them.

For her part, El-Messiri claimed that the FRA rule in Egypt serves as a global paradigm for fostering the economic empowerment of women.

She noted that UN Women Egypt is glad to continue working with the FRA on non-banking financial activities to enhance the rate of Egyptian women's economic involvement in the labour market, which has remained low and stagnant despite the increasing rate of women's education.

El-Messiri further emphasised that UN Women will offer technical assistance to enterprises in the non-banking financial sector to boost the number of women on corporate boards.

Source: Daily News Egypt

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