Women Are Making Progress In The United Arab Emirates

The news about women in the Middle East is often bleak. We hear stories about women's self-immolation in Afghanistan and rape victims in Saudi Arabia being lashed 100 times. But it seems that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is challenging some of the flow of negative information with one positive example.

Articles about women in the UAE are filled with hopeful statistics. 70% of university graduates are women. Women occupy 57% of university chairs. Women make up 60% of government sector employees and are increasingly entering job sectors traditionally occupied by men, including banking, engineering, and politics.

Recently, women have trained to become airline pilots, broken historical precedents in becoming judges and marriage registrars, and, most phenomenally, undertaken study to become muftis, highly respected Islamic scholars who have the right to issue decrees and fatwas over both men and women. The UAE is ranked 29th in the world under the United Nations Development Program's gender empowerment measure, making it the most highly ranked Arab country.

The BBC recently ran a story titled "Dubai Women Storm World Of Work," which highlighted the advances being made by Muslim women in the UAE's traditionally conservative and highly gender segregated society. Heather Sharp, the story's author, stated: "Virtually everyone I speak to points out that attitudes are changing."

She interviewed both men and women about women's increased presence in the work force, discovering that while women are undoubtedly going to work in greater numbers and taking on traditionally male professions, there isn't an absence of conflict about their changing roles. Women still said they'd be obligated to defer to their husbands if their husbands were dissatisfied with the type of job they took or with them taking jobs at all. Some men stated that they'd be happy to see their wives work, while others stated they'd prefer the wife stayed at home or took a job in a "closed" environment like a bank.

Still, the article and the comments that follow it paint a hopeful picture for women in the UAE. And while 80% of working women are household workers, and the UAE's top politicians are entirely male, I believe women can still find plenty of hope in the country's example. The government is publicly advocating the advancement of women and women themselves, encouraged by the former president's wife Sheikha Fatima bent Mubarek (who has fought for women's rights for the past thirty years) are speaking out and stepping into new roles. There may still be a long way to go to achieve equality, but it seems the UAE's women are at least on their way.

Photo: Panorama's Photostream