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INTERNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION

Education and Employment Among Women in the UAE

Fatma Abdulla
Fatma Abdulla is dean at the Sharjah Higher Colleges of Technology. Address: Sharjah Higher Colleges of Technology, P.O Box 7947, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. E-mail: fatma.abdulla@hct.ac.ae.

Three of every five students in public higher education in the United Arab Emirates are women. The vast majority (80 percent) of these young women are first-generation college students. Their fathers are more likely to have higher educational levels than their mothers, because Emirati men had access to education and diverse employment opportunities well before their female counterparts. The first school for men was established in the early 1950s, while women's schools opened their doors almost a decade later. Despite their late start, women have made monumental strides at all levels of the education system because of two factors. The first is the presence of strong support for education from the rulers of the Emirates. And the second and perhaps more potent reason is the availability of gender-segregated and cost-free primary, secondary, and tertiary education, which allows women of different socioeconomic and family circumstances to gain access to higher education.

However, the apparent success of women in the educational arena has not translated into comparable increases in employment rates. Only 14.7 percent of Emirati women were in full-time employment in 2003, an increase of 5.1 percent from 9.6 percent in 1985, with the majority of women employed in the public sector as teachers or clerical workers. Private-sector employment has been largely dominated by male foreign workers, with less than 2 percent of Emirati nationals (both male and female) employed in that sector.

The bleak picture of women and employment is not unique to the UAE but is a major issue in the Middle East and North African region, which has the lowest female labor participation rates in the world. A report published by the World Bank in February 2004, Gender and Development in the Middle East and North Africa: Women in the Public Sphere, states that for the past decade, the region's governments have spent an average of 5.3 percent of the GDP on education?the highest allocation in the world. This huge investment in education has closed the gender gap, with women outnumbering men in higher education institutions in several countries and has resulted in the largest increase in rate of employment over the last decade. Despite this increase, the female labor force participation in the region for the year 2000 stood at 32 percent?the lowest in the world.

Access to Employment
Three factors can be blamed for the low labor force participation rates of Emirati women. The first factor relates to the family, which is often labeled as the primary socioeconomic unit in the Arab world. The family plays a central role in the life of both men and women and is the sole institution through which individuals inherit their religion, social class, and cultural identities. Family interest overrides individual interest, and the family greatly affects the individual's attitude and choices. Family attitudes about female employment and a woman's ability to combine both work and family responsibilities are often identified as key to accessing work and remaining within the labor force.

The second element, closely related to the first, deals with the social conditions women need to comply with under the "code of modesty," which calls for the segregation of men and women in the quest to guard family honor. This code is adhered to in varying degrees by different groups within the society and confines women to seeking work in predominantly female work environments, such as schools.

The third and final element refers to the competition of women for public-sector employment and their strong preference for civil service careers. This preference is due to civil service laws that protect indigenous workers and make it difficult for employers to dismiss them without a legal battle. Public-sector employment also offers Emirati women a guarantee of employment even in cases of long absences due to sickness of immediate family members and paid maternity leave. However, throughout the 1990s, the government experienced decreased revenues as a result of falling oil prices, which led to the introduction of policies that limited the expansion of public-sector employment through automation of services and privatization?thus, sharply reducing the number of new hires and the possibility of employment in that sector. The largest employment growth area is in the private sector. Emirati women have limited access to private-sector jobs except for opportunities in the banking industry, where government-established policies require banks to maintain a 2 percent national work force quota. The restrictions placed on Emirati women by their families and community, coupled with their preferences and lack of network ties within the private sector, does not place them in a favorable position for the future.

Conclusion
The UAE has achieved a great deal in relation to the education and employment of women in its short 35-year history. However, not unlike other countries in the Middle East and North African region and the larger developing world, the country has issues it needs to address with regard to the disparity between male and female representation in paid employment. Men have much greater access to high-status and high-paying executive positions while only an insignificant number of women occupy key decision-making positions. The dearth of women in positions of power has undermined their ability to exert influence over economic and social decision-making structures. Barriers to the employment of women should be addressed to allow women to fully contribute to the nation-building process.

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