Meet the all-female UAE business that bears her name

When Radwa Allabban took over her communications agency seven years ago, she had no intention of turning it into an all-female team.

But soon the two became one, and jobs that fit their strengths, skills, and knowledge naturally followed.

Many of the agency’s current clients are women, with a team of 10 representing UN Women.

Ms Alaban, 43, who has worked in the industry for 20 years, vividly remembers the uncomfortable feeling of being pregnant with her first child while working for a major London firm.

She never told her employer, but was so embarrassed that she eventually quit her job and moved to the UAE in 2011.

“I started working in small independent companies and I found there was a lot of support for women there,” said Ms. Araban, a dual Egyptian and British citizen who has lived in the UAE for 11 years.

One of these boutique agencies is local communication In Abu Dhabi, where she has worked for four years, she had the opportunity to buy it in 2015, when the workforce consisted of a handful of women and one man.

After the co-owners left, the company consisted of Ms. Allabban and two other employees, all women.

She changed the direction of her business, from working for companies in the construction industry to nonprofits and similar industries.

“When you were young like us, you thought about how to build the business around the strength of the people and the ambition of the team,” Ms. Alaban said of International Women’s Day.

“Soon, it became clear that our natural strength as women was in influencing communication.”

The business started working with a United Nations project in the UAE and started working on sustainability and other areas.

“As women, we tend to have opinions on these things,” she said.

“We only had four or five women at the time. That’s when the idea of ​​being an all-female institution started to evolve.”

It now has 10 members from 9 countries: UK, Canada, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, India and the Philippines.

The company started with UN Women 2017.

“It really sets the pace for us, UN Women is the agency charged with supporting gender equality and putting women’s issues first. It seemed like the perfect fit for us as they are also predominantly women,” Ms Alaban said. Say.

She’s often asked if the 10 employees and an intern were fighting each other because they were all women — absolutely not, she said.

She said the staff had a sense of unity and purpose, and supported each other in whatever they needed flexibility at the time, be it childcare or a hobby.

“Our Arabic-speaking leader has three children, and if they have exams, the Arabic-speaking team members rally around her because they know she needs some flexibility for a while,” she said.

“Our head of design is a professional violinist, so we know what activities she’s doing. We talk about it openly. She also needs some flexibility because she has several shows at the expo. We empower each other. Women in Fighting at work is a big misconception.”

This approach helped her retain employees in an industry with a high turnover rate. It has no layoffs or pay cuts in 2020. The only employee leaving in 2021 is moving to the United States.

She said it was uncertain whether Place Communications would continue to be female-only — and in any case, men would not be left out.

“That would be discrimination,” Ms Alaban said.

“It just happened that everyone who was included was perfect in what they did, and they were indeed women.

“Maybe it’s because the nature of our work is looking for women with very specific skills.

“But it’s important that we look for people who have the right attitude and interest in the work we do.”

Updated: March 9, 2022 4:49 AM