Inside the minds of women in the UAE

Women in the UAE have voiced their opinion and made their views clear: they know sexual discrimination occurs in the work place and are ready to seek action if it happens to them.

When it comes to marriage, most women in the UAE have the freedom to choose their husband and if they are ever at the receiving end of spousal abuse, taking action is their first gut reaction.

Women in the UAE realise how important it is to be to financially independent and are motivated to work in order to advance their careers.

This is not to take away from the harsh reality of many whose financial burdens are what push them to go to work.

This is the overall conclusion from our latest survey undertaken by YouGov.

A total of 605 female UAE residents answered our questions; 57 per cent of the women were from the subcontinent (India/Pakistan); Arab expatriates constituted 15 per cent of the respondents and 10 per cent were Western expatriates.

The issues covered included: sexual harassment, marriage and spousal abuse, and work. Here are our findings:

Sexual harassment:

Sexual harassment in the work place is not an uncommon concept. People around the world, particularly women, suffer from this form of discrimination.

We asked the question: "Have you personally ever experienced sexual harassment at your current place of work?"

An overwhelming number of our female respondents said "no"; but 14 per cent said "yes".

Moreover, our figures revealed that Arab women experienced greater cases of sexual harassment when compared to Western and Asian women.

However, some Arab and Asian women said they "cannot imagine such a thing happening here". Only a few women would put up with sexual harassment to better their career.

Women with an income of $8,000 (Dh29,360) or more experienced more cases of sexual harassment than those with lower incomes.

Fortunately, the majority of women in the UAE would report an incident of sexual harassment or complain if they experienced it.

Finally, it was important to find out whether women in the UAE believed they are still viewed as superficial sex objects by men of their countries.

In line with the mainstream perception outside the UAE, our female respondents overwhelmingly said yes. Nearly one third, however, said no. This was persistent across all salary brackets.

Marriage: Freedom to choose and spousal abuse

A small minority (10 per cent) of women feel they do not have the freedom to choose their husband. These women are middle-aged and come from India and Pakistan. They feel that they have no freedom of choice when it came to selecting a life partner.

The rest of our YouGov female respondents feel they possess freedom of choice when it comes to choosing a husband.

It was evident from our survey that women with lower incomes were more likely to be denied the freedom of choosing a husband than those with higher salaries.

Opinion was mixed on the more contentious issue of spousal abuse. The number of optimists and pessimists are about equal.

Western women by and large felt spousal abuse was "fairly common" where as more Arab women felt it was "not very common". One third of our female respondents decided not to take sides and answered "don't know".

There was a notable swelling in the perception that spousal abuse is common in the UAE as the women's salaries increase; it seems the higher the salary of these women, the more likely they think spousal abuse is common in the UAE.

We took the issue a little further by asking the women if they believed spousal abuse is increasing or decreasing in the UAE. This time, the most common response was "don't know".

Nevertheless, the number of pessimists is greater than optimists within the Arab and Indian/Pakistani groups. Western respondents suggested there might be "no change" at the moment.

We posed a hypothetical question to our female respondents, "what would they do if they were the victim of spousal abuse?" With many options to choose from, the majority of women said they couldn't imagine this happening to them. This was especially the case amongst our Arab respondents.

Results show that the higher the income of these women, the more likely they will leave home if they became victims of spousal abuse. Western women thought they would "leave home" if they experienced spousal abuse while many Indian and Pakistani women felt they would fight back.

Financial independence:

More UAE women aged 25-34 said they were financially independent compared to older women.

The majority of our female YouGov respondents have full time jobs. In particular, Western women overwhelmingly spend 38 or more hours at their work place.

According to our survey, the younger a women is, the more likely she will have a full-time job. That is, as women of all backgrounds get older, the chance of them working part time is higher.

There is a wide range of professions to which our female respondents belong: more than one third work in middle or senior management sectors with incomes sometimes exceeding $4,000 (Dh14,680) and reaching over $8,000 (Dh29,360).

Clerical or office occupations also score highly among all nationality groups.

While the majority of Arab and Western women are financially independent, women from the Asian sub-continent were split; half of them said they were not financially independent while the other half said they had sufficient funds or income of their own to continue to live in the style to which they are accustomed.

Why work?

While a few women think of work as something to do with their time, the majority feel their main motivation for working is to either fulfil their financial need or advance their career.

More Western women chose career development as their main reason for work over money. This was not so with the Arab and Indian/Pakistani community who felt having a salary was their main rationale.

Overall, the majority of our female YouGov respondents are satisfied with the way women compared to men are being treated at their work place.

However, a closer look reveals that while Arab, Indian and Pakistani women feel they are treated exactly the same as men at work, Western women feel they are treated worse than men. This is persistent across all salary brackets.

When it comes to getting paid, women of all nationalities mostly agreed that women get paid differently than men. Having said that, some women (one third) displayed signs of optimism saying men make just as much as women in the work place.