The Influence of Risks Associated With Organizational Factors on Women's Professional Growth During COVID-19 in the UAE

Introduction

The woman – the most incredible creation of Mother Nature and most inspiring community on the globe inevitably deserves the enthusiastic approach from all corners of the society for her committed, dedicated, and steadfast approach towards the surroundings of her existence. The women never hesitate to dedicate themselves to taking care of their loved family members, along with intense zeal and zest, to extend their support to their professional responsibilities. In providing more big money to their families, most women work these days, particularly in the last two to three decades. The trend of women employment throughout the globe has received phenomenon growth, including the traditional Islamic world also. Whatever may be the reason, and wherever women are working, they have been showing their mark in their professional career with their untiring commitment by perfectly balancing personal, social, and professional responsibilities. Women receive equal employment opportunities from private and public sector organizations with emotional intelligence, patience, compassion, intuition, adaptability, and networking skills. Modern-day professionally managed organizations identified women's strengths and capacities, treated them as bigwigs, and successfully offered a slot in their think-tanks. However, the pace is very minimal, and an insufficient number of women-only has received the kind of opportunities to get significant spaces in companies' organizational structures. The corporate world should develop uniform policies, plans, programs, and strategies with high confidence to throw away gender discrimination by proffering equal employment opportunities based on the skill and ken-level of the employees. Many career studies have primarily focused on either the western or Asian context. Gender discrimination has long been an extensively debatable issue (Arrow 1971; Lazear and Rosen, 1990; Bernard and Laband, 1995). Though globalization and equal employment opportunity regimes have opened several paths of company positions, so far, females are still less represented when it comes to climbing the corporate ladder (Grout et al. 2009), International Labor Organization (ILO), (2010a, 2010b). The world observed the signs of active participation of women leaders at all levels of decision-making in political, economic, and public life with equal opportunity (Osborn et al., 2015). Even with increasing participation in education and the labor force (United Nations (U.N.), 2015), women are stuck to higher posts in their careers. This trend presented a “glass ceiling” metaphor to the corporate world. The crucial research question to be answered in this paper is: What are the various organizational/situational factors that influence the UAE women's professional success? To address the critical research question, the researchers identified diverse organizational factors affecting professional growth in different parts of the globe with an extensive germane literature survey. The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has brought about extraordinary challenges in diverse aspects of life. The current pandemic has presented immense challenges; other factors also shape the business landscape across the supply chain. The existing epidemic may be described as a global stress event that tests organizations' financial, operational and commercial resilience. They linked those factors with the UAE by collecting the opinions of five hundred women working in different public and private sector organizations only from Dubai and Sharjah emirates.