The Evolving Space of Emirati Women's Economic Participation

This conceptual paper discusses the contouring of the embryonic space in which Emirati women can enact economic agency. I examine this from three perspectives, namely, the workforce localisation policies, the government’s aspiration to establish itself as a force within the international political arena, and the country’s cultural landscape. These three factors represent the most powerful influences that determine Emirati women's experience of the workplace, and this paper explores their impact on the space that is evolving in which women can exercise their economic agency. The space available for Emirati women's economic participation is not prescribed; rather, it emerges as ever fluctuating and transforming as a consequence of the varying contextual dominance of one or other of these three potent influences. The UAE’s severe workforce imbalance, marked by 96% expatriates in the private sector and about 40% in the public sector, renders localising the workforce a key strategic objective. This fosters a route for women to find their place in the economy. The government’s goal to become a key player on the global stage and a beacon of Arab political power and diplomacy involves crafting a distinguished international image. A substantial component of achieving this goal is redressing the historic female disempowerment that is seen to characterise the region. Again, this ambition eases women's access to economic participation. The country’s cultural landscape, however, imposes certain constraints on women enacting economic agency. This landscape has altered exponentially since the affluence of the oil boom and many segments of the local population see positive aspects in Emirati women’s expanding economic capacities. Yet values which maintain that women are primarily domestic creatures survive and militate against full acceptance of women in the workforce. Additionally, this space is also keenly influenced and configured by myriad diverse collective and individual understandings of national development aspirations, cultural legacies, and new positionings of women. The contribution of this study is its analysis of how specific institutional and societal forces effect how gender can be done and undone in this geopolitical context in which women’s highly liminal economic agency is generating new conceptualisations of empowerment and freedoms.