Shattering times

The current financial downturn may have a positive side. Wives and daughters in the UAE may have to go to work, quietly shattering the ingrained patriarchal view that women firmly belong at home.

As a woman whose grandmothers liberated a whole line of girls from societal and cultural norms, I fully agree with the statement above. It came from a liberated Arab woman, Tasneem Mayet, who heads a female-only team of very skilled investment specialists, in her role as Senior Vice-President and head of investments, FORSA Dubai. Four other Gulf Arab women at the recently concluded DIFC Forum: Ranya Doleh, Elham Hassan, Najla Al Awadi and Noor Sweid, agree that while things are slowly changing for the present generation of educated, articulate and feisty young women because businesses and governments encourage their progress, they are being primarily held back at home.

Generation gap

A generation gap where parents continue to encourage their ambitious boys and yet frown upon their ambitious daughters is known to be the prime stumbling block. (Read Forum takes on Gulf women in Business)

While women in the Gulf are quietly struggling to find their rightful place in the world of business and politics, women around the world are fighting that same battle every day. We all ought to be extremely grateful to women in the West who fought for decades for some parity in the workplace and in government. The suffragettes in Britain celebrated their victory in 1918. In the last 90 years, more and more women have crossed the line from the hearth to a hundred fields of work that will remain a job in progress until mothers personally take charge of the future of their daughters. It was also pointed out at the forum that the destinies of women lay squarely in the hands of other females.

Women judge women harsher than men do. If that’s being competitive or envious is irrelevant, but it’s sad that while the old boys’ network works extremely well, women usually put other women down.

Don’t agree with me? Where do you think all those mother-in- law jokes come from? Women are extremely versatile. They juggle family, career and their social lives with aplomb and yet have to continually defend their choices. There is really no need any more to fight like the suffragettes did – violence does not beget profound change. So what’s the sisterhood to do?

Shatter that already cracked glass ceiling I say, with education, a dialogue with families and certainly with mothers-in-law.