Women in tech: Hoda A. Alkhzaimi, Emirates Digital Association for Women

For the field of emerging technologies and advanced manufacturing, 2021 has been a transformational year where the focus on creating digital assets has been the prominent focus. As per UNCTAD’s Technology and Innovation Report 2021, frontier technologies already represent a $350bn market, with an anticipated rise to $3.2 trillion by 2025. This is subdivided into a surge in investments in sensors, IoT-based sectors, AI, robots, and big data, as well as developing initiatives that create a human impact while also accomplishing sustainable development goals.

When it comes to forecasting the industry’s direction of growth over the next year and the decade to come, we must be mindful of the long-term impact of technological trends in general and the industry-specific trends that come into play to fulfil a sustainable global need. The pandemic has reshuffled economic priorities to generate local and nationalised assets and cultivate global alliances and investments for countries and international organisations. As a result, we are seeing new investment models geared at developing sectors to improve people’s lives.

This surpasses the current focus on next-generation process automation solutions within IoT platforms, visualisation technologies that create twining realities in digital spaces for various physical assets, reshaping the future of connectivity with 5G and constellations’ satellites, and developing next-generation computing beyond quantum computing devoted to power and Neuromorphic Chips.

The reality is that we will concentrate on bio revolutionary computer concepts based on bio augmentations, sophisticated generations of nanoparticles, while the world will focus on circular and sustainable technology that will facilitate human prosperity on all levels. This will include trading platforms for renewable energy fusion and storage facilities.We are walking towards user-centric technology that will enable users to become the decision makers when it comes to data governance and computing choices. This technology will allow users to block analytics and customise and monetise their shared data via any digital data trading platform that offers economic independence for these users. When it comes to strategic leadership directions within the economic environments of the leading technological industries, we have seen a strong emphasis on using diversity and inclusion policies across the board to enable good talent integration.

However, we must keep in mind that paying close attention to these behaviours should not create further hurdles for females in achieving leadership positions in their fields. The focus should remain on improving the quality of advocacy, support systems and framework s we are building to create high calibre and fair opportunities for women to lead and compete within this portfolio of the technology industry.

Given the present context in the digital sector, which is focused on eliminating biases and promoting equitable access to opportunities, the global call that we are making now necessitates that we are engaged in establishing impactful global and local ecosystems. This should be customised and not generic for each organisation, focusing on improving rewards, working conditions and promotions pathways across boards.

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