Qatari Women Are Breaking Barriers

March 8, 2013 was the International Women’s Day. I’m dedicating this week’s blog to give recognition to Qatari women have taken the initiative to change the Qatari society by breaking barriers. It is very important to highlight the fact that many Qatari women are educated, and “According to the CIA World Factbook, the literacy rate of females in Qatar is 88.6%, one of the highest in the Arab world,” (Qatar Visitor). Therefore, these educated women play a big role in helping Qatar economically and socially grow and develop. In the past, women in Qatar were mostly doing the household work and the man used to be the breadwinner. We learned in the Cinematic Sociology book that the in the traditional breadwinner-homemaker type of family life, the husband works and earns money to support the entire nuclear family, whereas the wife does the house chores and takes care of her children. Qatari families used to function or follow that type of system, but it has drastically changed in the past few decades. Now Qatari women are competing with Qatari men in the work field. More than 70% of females have a bachelor degree in Qatar, (Qatar Today). Qatari women are already holding professional jobs in hospitals, schools, universities, companies, media, and other fields. Women’s life doesn’t depend on marriage. More women are pursing their education and thinking of building their own career path. There are a lot of Qatari women who have also started their own businesses. Women have opened their own abaya, cupcake, and clothing shops. Below are pictures of businesses that are running by Qatari women and women working in the media. Women who get married don’t just sit at home but they also choose to work. The Cinematic Sociology book describes the second shift as the jobs that working wives do to run the household after they finish the workday. We see married Qatari women who work while they still have a husband and a house to take care of. The book described Hochschild’s study where she identified three types of couples. The first types is traditional couples where both the husband and the wife work outside home but the wife is required to come home to do her duties as a mother, which involves cooking, cleaning, laundry, and so on. The husband is only expected to do the traditional male tasks such as fixing something in the house or the car. Usually, married couples in Doha would fall under this category. The man comes home from work, and he expects his food to be prepared, as his wife makes sure that this is something that is taken care of. The second type is called transitional, and it’s when the husband helps his wife with the household stuff. The third type is egalitarian and usually the husband and the wife share the house work together by diving the work with each other, but the woman is expected to do the majority of the work because she’s more organized and more likely to have things done. As they say, behind every great man there is a great woman. Women are the foundation of the house and they have to help and support their husbands in order to maintain a healthy, successful marriage. The video below shows how Arab women including Qatari women are breaking barriers in the State of Doha.

Breaking Barriers - Arab Women from Zeena Kanaan on Vimeo.