The headquarters of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company sits at the intersection of the imposing Emirates Palace and Etihad Towers - but for many years Adnoc's was the only building there.
As it was when Naiema Al Maskari, arrived for her first day at work in 1984, and she was also the first on the block - the first Emirati woman to join the marketing division, the group that arranges the sale of the country's most important export to customers around the world. With the only other female expatriates working as secretaries for the mostly foreign staff, the graduate fresh out of the University of Sussex found herself alone.
"I wanted to do some very important things in my life," she recalls. "It's the largest revenue producer in the country. My intention was just to participate."
Today she heads a budget team of 14, evenly split between men and women. Women make up about 10 per cent of the marketing division, forecasting oil prices for the coming year, representing the UAE at Opec meetings and making sure supplies make it to customers in the Far East.
Thanks to initiatives such as an exclusively female engineering college at the capital's Petroleum Institute and abaya-friendly field uniforms, the faces of Adnoc's employees have changed as radically as the landscape of the Corniche.
But like their counterparts in the rest of the world, female nationals face a work and family balancing act, often compounded because of local tradition. Few women in the UAE have progressed beyond non-technical middle-management roles, in contrast to Kuwait and Oman, where a Kuwaiti woman heads a private exploration company and Omani women occupy top engineering positions.
The Adnoc group currently employs 12,500 Emiratis, according to data from the company for this year, of which a little more than 2,000 are women, or 16 per cent of the national workforce. The numbers of women have doubled since 2007.
"We are proud of the numbers we have today," says Sultan Al Mehairi, Adnoc's marketing and refining director. "Of course we always look forward to seeing a bigger number of ladies and also to see them in management roles in the future. "We were the first to employ females because there were some jobs where we thought females could give a bigger result.
"Most of them are working very hard. If they are not equal, [they are] even better."
Hessa Al Kuwaiti, a supply coordinator for refined products, joined Adnoc in 2006. Although she is technically on call 24 hours a day, seven days of the week, she says the company understands her boundaries. "Due to our job we're going for meetings and conferences with the clients, and the management understands that we're ladies," she says.
"If there is something excluding the girls, they are respecting the tradition and the culture. The family, they won't accept sitting with men at dinner or staying late at night."
Women decide for themselves how far to progress, says a colleague, Shamma Al Mehairbi, a supply coordinator. "If they see that the lady is able to attend and meet with clients, this is a chance for her to progress to a management position. Because if not, it's hard."
The key is getting support from family, says Ms Al Maskari, whose husband works in Adnoc's retail arm. Nannies, help from her parents and early working hours ending at 2pm or 3pm enabled her to raise children while working.
"Commitment is very important because without it you don't get anywhere. And balance. If you are not happy at home, you will not be happy in the office," she adds. "These days we need people to participate; we have a lot still to do. When you're at home, you're saying, 'Oh, I can't go work with men.' But everyone is supportive and respects the ladies."
