During the last decade Emirati women due to their ever increasing educational achievements – sustained by a state politics of modernization – have ventured into a great variety of occupations.

As corollary, the term “women leadership” has become fashionable in public and governmental discourses highlighting Emirati women’s success stories. In such accounts, Emirati women leaders are usually portrayed as living in a perfect world in which they not only pursue their exemplary careers, but also excel as ideal mothers and wives living up to traditional Emirati gender values accentuating female modesty, seclusion, and submissiveness.

In this presentation, I shall measure such accounts and their ideological underpinnings against the experiences of 30 Emirati women leaders from the cultural sector with whom I conducted extensive interviews about their career pathways, family background, their achievements, and the various challenges and obstacles they are facing due to their status – both at the work space and at home. My presentation examines how Emirati women leaders are navigating between state feminist discourses and the still prevalent conservative gender role expectations and precepts in the UAE, and how they cope with the “profits and losses” experienced along these pathways.

Laila Prager is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Hamburg (Germany) and a Senior Research Fellow in the Humanities Research Fellowship for, the Study of the Arab World. Her research interests are: Anthropology of the Middle East, Heritage Discourses in the GCC, Identity and Cultural Politics, Kinship and Gender, Migration and Transnationalism, Islam and "Heterodox" Religious Groups, Public Health and Medical Anthropology.

Speakers
Laila Prager, Senior Humanities Research Fellow, NYUAD