Qatari Women: Family life vs. Work

Marriage in Qatar is a serious matter that is intertwined with honor. Women’s place is upheld in the Qatari society by protecting the women’s reputation and thus, protecting the family name.  The common ideology that was circled around in Qatar, until very recently, was that a woman must marry in order to fulfill her role in the society, and her role in leading a normal life.

Women’s role becomes institutionalized with in the nuclear family. A Qatari woman who wants to become successful has to prove herself successful in a family life before she is considered to be successful at work.

Women in Qatar have to take on the role of establishing a family and taking care of it. Any shortness in fulfilling that role means that something is wrong with the woman. Qatari women can never be breadwinners in the society, as the man has to provide for everything. Breadwinner is a term that describes the tradition of the man figure providing for his family. If the woman works then that’s her prerogative and she may choose to deal with her income however she’d like. She can spend it on her children or herself, but the children have to be living a well-provided life from the father’s income.  

Women take on the role of a working individual in order tofill their time. That in itself is seen as an accomplishment as instead of sitting home alone, women choose to fill their time by doing work. However, first and for most the work they do can be interrupted by any of a working mother’s children’s demands. If the child calls his mother to pick him up from school early, the mother has to dismiss her work and pick up her child. Therefor, Qatari women are on a constant working shift, from their real work hours to the second shift they have at home running the household.

The video I’m sharing for this blog is a statement about a happy Qatari woman. Analyzing it shows that there’s no husband in the picture, only kids. However, including kids indicates the presence of a husband at some point. The short film couldn’t have been done with out showing the complete life of the woman. The woman’s life is complete by having a perfect house life, indicated by the happiness of her children, and a perfect workspace.

Abayas In Qatar

The recent readings we had this time were so broad that it made it difficult to decide what to write about. However, words such hegemony, material culture and cultural relativism stood out to me when I started to apply those terms to real life situations here in Qatar. We are not passive when it comes to the media. We, humans, tend to critically analyze and interpret what we see, read and hear. In this case, abaya trends and fashion in Qatar emphasize this theory because most women here are using abayas as a way to resist and protest against the old traditional culture. At the same time, they’re conforming the culture by resisting western influence. In order to observe and have a better understanding, I decided to take a walk in Landmark Mall and observe abaya stores and women wearing abaya.

First of all, we should keep in mind that wearing an abaya is symbolic of the Qatari material culture. By material culture, I mean everything that is part of our construct within our physical environment, basically, anything that we can touch. While walking through an abaya store, I noticed how most women bought what was either advertised through the media outlets such as posters and magazines, or custom made abayas that had some touches of western fashion. This goes back to my point, women here are resisting the western influence, but simultaneously protesting against traditional and simple culture of wearing a black abaya. In other words, abayas have become a form of expression and cultural relativism.

Another factor I noticed was the ideology behind wearing an abaya. By ideology, I mean the system of concepts and relationships by accepting its causes and effects. In other words, wearing an abaya is embedded within the Qatari culture and society if you don’t wear it, you will be looked at as either foreign or just different. It seems to be part of the social norm to wear an abaya. From what I observed tonight, most young women in their teenage years were wearing fancy abayas, whereas older women were wearing more simple and elegant abayas.

Before walking out of Landmark Mall, I noticed a group of young women wearing fancy abayas with westernized designs that looked almost like dresses. In sociological terms, that could be a possible hegemony. Yes, women here are resisting western influence, but the West has already used its power to cause voluntary consent, as it seems the natural order of things. Some abaya wearers tend to wear the abaya just because of the societal norms and for the respect of the elderly. One of the girls i talked to said, "I only wear it cause of my father. I take off my abaya when i leave the country. I design most of my abayas from most fashion trends in Europe, i guess that is a way for me to express my taste in fashion." All in all, we should keep in mind that “Culture” is socially constructed.