Women in the UAE stand to benefit from the burgeoning ‘new space’ economy

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The UAE has made significant strides in female empowerment and gender equality. Women in the Emirates enjoy equal rights with men in terms of legal status, property rights, education, and the right to practise all professions. In some areas, women also enjoy greater political participation than in most other countries, accounting for 50 per cent of seats on the Federal National Council.

This progress is recognised on August 28 through Emirati Women’s Day, which honours women’s accomplishments and their ambitions for the future.

When it comes to the latter, it’s becoming clear that for many women in the Emirates, the future lies in the “new space” economy—a term used to describe the expanding commercial activities related to space exploration.

Already, UAE women are blazing a trail in this exciting new sector. Eighty percent of the Emirates Mars Mission’s scientific team was composed of women, while the team behind the UAE astronaut programme is 70 per cent female.

One of the best starting points for women looking to break into the new space economy is the satellite sector. This is because new advances in satellite technology, combined with the UAE’s unique geography and climate, mean that this will be a booming sector in the years ahead.

Satellite services in the UAE: A growing market

A key driver behind the fast-growing satellite market is the emergence of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites, which use radar to create detailed images of the Earth’s surface. These satellites simulate a much larger antenna, enabling low-cost, high-resolution images. This capability makes SAR satellites more practical to launch and enables a wide range of applications well-suited to the UAE context.

Flood response is one example. This April, Dubai experienced the heaviest rainfall in 75 years, with the ensuing floods causing widespread disruption. With such weather events expected to become more frequent, the UAE will need to introduce new measures to manage and mitigate their impact.

For instance, SAR satellites can provide intelligence on the suitability of locations for renewable power generation—such as ensuring sites are accessible for construction and maintenance. Satellites can also monitor coastlines and sea routes, enabling a rapid response to oil spills and minimising their environmental impact.

Employment opportunities for UAE women

As the use of SAR satellites increases, there will be a wide range of roles available to women, including data scientists, systems engineers, project managers, and mission controllers. The development of application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable end-to-end process automation is proving important, as it is democratising the technology and empowering end users to take control of satellite operations, creating new job opportunities in the process.

APIs essentially set rules that developers follow to retrieve specific data or functionalities from a service and ensure that everything integrates seamlessly. Using APIs, end users are able to directly task satellites to take images of a given location at a specific time, removing the need to go through the operator’s support team. Similarly, APIs can be used to enable self-service image discovery by empowering users to search the operators’ vast image catalogues independently.

With this technology, new roles for UAE women as controllers of satellite operations will emerge.

The growth potential of the SAR satellite sector and the emergence of APIs to boost related job roles within user organisations present a significant opportunity for all people looking to make their mark in the new space economy. Given the hugely important role women already play in the new space sector, it seems likely that many will thrive in the roles that SAR satellites are opening up.

The author, Jamil Kawar, is VP for Missions in the Middle East and North Africa at ICEYE.

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