Expat women overcoming professional challenges

Doha: Salwa is struggling to settle in to Doha. She arrived here late last year when her husband was offered a job in the public sector.

While she does not have any monetary complaints, life is not the same anymore. Back home in Yemen she was a school teacher with years of experience but with no one to take care of her five children, she has no choice but to accept being a stay-at-home mum here.

“My parents and in-laws all lived close to our house so I could go to work in the morning without worrying about my children,” she tells Gulf News.

Salwa’s story is not dissimilar to those of several expatriate women who come to Qatar as trailing spouses once their husbands are lured into this fast-growing Gulf country. The lucrative contracts, however, come with their own share of domestic issues.

A lack of options for reliable childcare services, coupled with an inflexible work environment almost always means that it is the mother making the sacrifice.

While there are some organisations that have moved on with the times and now offer options such as working from home or flexibility in work hours, most bosses would raise an eyebrow if their employee stepped out for an extra hour.

Domestic headaches, however, are not the sole reason why women find it difficult to work here. For instance, employers prefer some nationalities over the other when it comes to hiring women as they choose to steer clear of visa hassles.

Being a news presenter, moving to Qatar from the West presented some challenges for her in terms of dressing and a few other issues, but these were issues she was had to overlook.

Qatar is still a long way from being a country with a growing number of stay-at-home fathers and offering women options that match their qualifications, but the country’s pace of picking up global trends has improved in the last few years and it may go some way in ensuring that women here can have a healthy balance between their professional and family lives.

— Hafsa Adil is a freelance journalist based in Doha