Walk into any bank branch in the United Arab Emirates and you could be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about when it comes to national underemployment and the gender divide of this conservative Muslim society.
The UAE imposes a quota of around 22 per cent for the number of nationals that regional and international banks have to hire, with other Gulf states also imposing quota systems to open private-sector job opportunities for their largely underemployed nationals. Banks also have to increase the percentage of local workers every year. The result: tellers seem to be, more often than not, national women.
