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Yes, men received Gender Balance awards in UAE. So?

Yes, they did, and you know what? They deserved to because they are the heads of the government departments that were honoured for working hard to bridge the gender divide.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, quipped Mark Twain once. He, of course, was being sarcastic. But in a typical case of missing the woods for the trees, the UAE, which has a stellar record in maintaining gender parity and promoting women's equality in government and business, was being trolled on social media by a few foreign media outlets earlier this week because "the pictures showed that the men received the gender balance awards".
Yes, they did, and you know what? They deserved to because they are the heads of the government departments that were honoured for working hard to bridge the gender divide. It would have been easy for the UAE to get tens if not hundreds of women from these few government departments to get on the stage to receive the awards, and it would have surely made for a good photo opportunity. But how would that help the cause? The men receiving the awards doesn't change the fact that they were there because their departments pushed the envelope on gender equality, that they were there because the employees in their departments - both women and men - worked hard to initiate fresh and innovative gender balance programmes and installing the best policies in support of gender balance.
It doesn't change the fact that the UAE is a country where the literacy rate of women is an impressive 95.8 per cent, where men and women receive equal pay by law, where women comprise almost 47 per cent of the workforce, where women's representation in 2019 elections is set to be at 50 per cent. The UAE, in fact, it is the first country in the Arab region to introduce a mandatory female presence in boardrooms, and Dr Amal Al Qubaisi, President of the UAE's Federal National Council, is the first woman in the Arab world to be elected as speaker of a national council. The country checks every box on the gender parity parameter, but then, why let real facts get in the way of a good troll, right?