UAE: A mannequin for girls’s rights within the Middle East?

Successful girls have been making headlines within the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Just this week, 28-year-old Noura al-Matroushi was named the primary feminine astronaut for the nation’s bold area program. But Al-Matroushi just isn’t the one lady on this business by an extended shot. According to the Emirates Ministry of State for Advanced Sciences, girls make up 80% of the science staff behind the present Mars mission.
The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual Global Gender Gap Report lists the UAE as a “leader in promoting gender equality in the Middle East” and ranks it among the many “five most improved countries in the overall index,” with gender gaps narrowed by at the very least 4.4 proportion factors. As of this 12 months, the UAE is ranked 72 of 153 international locations. In 2020, it ranked 120.
Forbes Middle East, the enterprise journal’s 2020 checklist of energy businesswomen, says Emiratis “are the most prevalent nationality, with 23 entries.”
Still, one can’t assist however marvel how these numbers — in addition to worldwide acknowledgment, and nationwide plans to advance the position of girls and equal pay — are to be squared with accusations of extreme human rights abuses. Not to say allegations leveled in opposition to Dubai’s ruler, Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum — whose daughters Latifa and Shamsa have both disappeared or are being held underneath strict home arrest regardless of a global outcry.
UAE solely partially progressive
According to the World Bank, the inhabitants of the UAE grew to 9.9 million folks in 2020. However, solely about 10% — half of that are girls — are literally Emirati residents topic to native legal guidelines. The overwhelming majority are both expatriates who work for overseas firms or overseas staff within the native development, service or home labor sectors.
In 2017, the UAE handed a legislation guaranteeing restricted labor rights for foreign-born home staff. Despite additional authorized adjustments in late 2020, the state of affairs for these overseas staff — who’re nonetheless sure to the kafala (visa sponsorship) system — has not considerably improved. It nonetheless falls in need of worldwide requirements, Human Rights Watch (HRW) mentioned — and the group’s criticism isn’t restricted to overseas staff.
In March, forward of the eightieth pre-session of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination in opposition to Women, together with its evaluation of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination in opposition to Women (CEDAW), HRW revealed an open letter highlighting an extended checklist of human rights issues pertaining to girls.
One of the problems addressed by HRW is the truth that solely Emirati males can move on citizenship to offspring, leaving the youngsters of Emirati moms and worldwide fathers stateless, as no delivery certificates are issued to them. Stateless people lack entry to fundamental rights and companies all through their lives.
A second urgent concern is that of marriage and divorce. “What steps are the authorities taking to ensure women have rights on an equal basis with men to enter marriage, within marriage, in divorce, and in decisions relating to children, including removing male guardianship policies?” requested HRW. Currently, a person is ready to finish a wedding unilaterally with a number of spoken phrases — whereas a lady wants the written permission of a male guardian to enter or go away a wedding.
Digital revolution of the vital mass
And but, the picture of Emirati girls has modified. Until the 2000s, the state held a monopoly on public discourse. “Religious figures operated as powerful orators capable of shaping and maintaining public opinion in favor of conservative norms and policies that largely contributed to keeping Khaleeji [those from the Gulf region] women submissive and hidden from sight,” Dabya al-Rafaei, a researcher on modern public discourse and the appliance of vital feminist idea within the Gulf, instructed DW.
It was solely after the emergence of cellular web and social media that the so-called “digital revolution” started to destabilize this sample. “With more women challenging discriminatory policies, highlighting their inferior status in society, or simply sharing snippets from their daily lives, it was no longer possible to monopolize the discourse around the place of women in the Gulf,” al-Rafaei defined. Women’s visibility has in flip challenged the established order. However, in terms of equal pay, there’s nonetheless a large hole between the state’s decree and actuality, the researcher says.
In a current paper titled “Fashla: The Politics of Image-Making in the Gulf,” revealed on the weblog of the London School of Economics, al-Rafaei and co-author Mira Al Hussein — an Emirati PhD candidate on the University of Cambridge, who’s researching sociological themes in Gulf larger training — conclude that “Gulf states are undertaking modernization efforts that allow women more visibility to showcase state-supported empowerment.”
That conclusion is supported by Mouza Al Shehhi, director of UN Women Liaison Office for the Gulf Cooperation Council. “I think that the leadership of the UAE understands the importance of women role models and has seized numerous opportunities to showcase the success of Emirati women across all sectors,” she instructed DW.
For her, the announcement of the primary Emirati lady to coach as an astronaut was inspiring for the nation and the area. “But for anyone who follows the UAE’s progress on women’s rights, it was not surprising.”