Arabs and Working Women

Women were and will always be the other half of the society that we all live in. different societies have different ways of treating women, and most of the time it is not equal. In the Middle East it is a normal thing to see men working and women staying home with the kids. The notion of mothers should stay home and raise their kids to be the “best” was stated by many families. While having a normal conversation with a friend of mine, I pulled out a question “Do you think women should go out and work or stay home and raise the kids?” That was her response:

Although this answer makes since to many of us, women hate to stay at home. They feel that their life is surrounded by kids, cleaning, washing and all the boring home duties. Whereas the man goes out, work, travel and have a business lunch. Women want to take a break from the home duties and go out to explore what this world has to offer for them. If the women is out working who is going to take care of the kids? The maid? Why would someone leave her/his kid with someone who is only supposed to do is taking care of the house? Well the answer would be that women want to explore the life outside the house, and that is why some parents who both work keep their kids in a nursery school if the kids were young.

In sociology, the breadwinner system means that the man goes out to work and the wife stays home with the kids. This been the system for Arabs for a long time, and it will, from my perspective, continue for the next few decades. The man will always be the man of the house. The breadwinner system varies from a social class to another. For example, women from the high middle class are not supposed to work because they have enough money that the man gets. On the other hand, women from the working class or the low middle class might not have enough money to support the family. Therefore, the women also work to support their husbands to provide the best support for their kids.

As an Arab, I think women should be given the chance to go outside and work, but work should not conflict with their other duties to their husbands and kids.

Maids Abuse in Qatar

The phenomenon of maids took over Qatar and the Gulf countries in the past 20 years. Since the majority of the Qatari citizens are from the middle upper social class or the higher upper social class, they all tend to have one maid or more in their property. These maids are assigned to different duties, starting from cleaning and cooking to driving children to schools and friend's house.

Indonesia, India and The Philippines are the country who usually train their maids and send them to the gulf to work. Yet human rights are violated in all Gulf countries, but it does not include the whole population. For example, Al Jazeera English report established that Indonesians maids receive training before heading out to work in someone's house, but lately, they received a lot reports about violations of human rights. Some maids got tortured by the people that they work for. These forms of torture start with hitting and end in burning skin or popping out an eye.

According to these maids, they were tortured because could not do a certain duty because their physical body could not handle it, or because they wanted to get paid for the past couple of months. Three Journalism students, Abir Bouguerra, Angel Polacco and Sara Al-Darwish did a report about maid abuse in Qatar. The story concluded that maids from different nationalities get abused physically, verbally and physiologically. All these abuse forms are added to their low salary. Bouguerra, Polacco and Al-Darwish mentioned laws that were established by the Emir of Qatar that protect labors rights. What grabbed my attention in these laws is that maids are not allowed to work more than eight hours a day, freedom of religious practices and having the Friday off.

In sociology, treatment based on nationally and race is a form of racism and different social classes. Social Mobility is a term that means "if you work hard you go one level up", but for these maids who are located in the working class are unlikely to go up even one level. Yet the middle class such as students and people who attend schools are more likely to move to the highest class only if they work hard. In Qatar, most people get treated based on their position in the society and what they do. Although families in Qatar tend to teach their children to respect the maids and the drivers, these kids tend to disrespect their maids and yell at them for silly reasons.

Maids should be respected as humans, and should be treated the same as we treat anyone else. If they do a mistake one should forgive because at the end of the day we are all humans.