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On January 27th, the UAE gave away gender equality awards. The authorities in the country were strongly ridiculed on social media after it turned out that all of the awarded individuals are men.
https://twitter.com/DXBMediaOffice/status/1089547416037191680
Certificates and medals were awarded by Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the vice-president of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Dubai, in the categories of “best government entity supporting gender balance”, “best federal authority supporting gender balance” and “best gender balance initiative” at a ceremony.
The awards went to the finance ministry, the federal competitiveness and statistics authority and ministry of human resources respectively. All awarded departments were represented by male awardees.
Another absurdity is that essentially the UAE government was giving “gender equality” awards to its own departments, to itself in short.
This included top ranking generals given that the deputy prime minister and minister of the interior, Lt Gen Sheikh Saif bin Zayed al-Nahyan, received the “best personality supporting gender balance” — supposedly for his tireless efforts implementing maternity leave in the UAE’s military.
Expectedly, the Twitter post and the Award initiative were both ridiculed widely on social media.
https://twitter.com/AnneCalie/status/1089679436444766209
https://twitter.com/Crystal_SethLab/status/1089584305347678208
https://twitter.com/weesue/status/1089911246491709441
The Dubai Media Office tried to salvage the situation with a follow-up tweet, which dug an even deeper hole.
https://twitter.com/DXBMediaOffice/status/1089550628853039104
After all, the post did add a few women in the group photograph.
Following are some of the more interesting responses.
https://twitter.com/TheRealCBNN/status/1089980659299434497
https://twitter.com/Earth_Woman1/status/1089644604591288320
And finally, in the spirit of gender equality and LGBTQ justice.
https://twitter.com/candblack/status/1090014157972430850
