Rooted in tradition and driven by ambition: Mira Bin Thani speaks on Emirati womanhood

Dubai: For Mira Bin Thani, being an Emirati woman has never meant choosing between tradition and ambition.

She has built a life that moves between seemingly different worlds: she is a mother, entrepreneur, writer, endurance horse rider, and holds a master’s degree in Diplomacy and International Affairs. But rather than seeing these identities as competing with one another, Bin Thani sees them as parts of the same woman.

“I’ve always been curious about the world. I never felt the need to be one thing,” she says. “I could be a mother, a poet, an entrepreneur, and a woman still discovering herself.”

That sense of possibility, she believes, comes from the women who came before her.

“We come from a long line of remarkable women, women who raised generations, carried responsibility, and held it together with such elegance,” she says. “The Emirati woman today is not a new woman; she’s the same woman who stood on this land generations ago. She’s simply way more equipped now with knowledge, tools, and everything needed to still remain remarkable.”

Bin Thani’s understanding of strength is deeply tied to her family. She grew up surrounded by entrepreneurs. Her mother and father both ran businesses, teaching her to take risks while remaining calculated, and to make room for both creativity and ambition.

But one of her greatest influences was her grandfather, Thani Al Muhairi.

Born and raised in Dubai, he became a businessman from a young age. Bin Thani recalls spending hours with him. At just 12 or 13, she says, she and her grandfather became "best friends”.

“Listening to those stories of not just strength, but the inability to give up because you had to provide,” she says, “and then the kind of power and inspiration that runs through you to build businesses and expand them, his story [had], and always will, inspire me.”

Her gratitude also extends further back. “I am and will always be grateful for the women who raised me, my mother, my grandmother, and the women who came before them,” she says. “They have given us such strength, resilience, inspiration, but also taught us to respect the femininity in our culture.”

August 28 is Emirati Women’s Day, but it also happens to be her birthday. For her, though, celebrating Emirati women should not be limited to one date. “Emirati women should be celebrated every single day,” she says.

She remembers how beauty remained present even when resources were scarce. Henna, kohl and bukhoor were more than decoration or fragrance; they were expressions of identity, tradition and a sense of home.

“In our culture, [a guest] doesn’t just leave empty-handed,” she says. “You come as a guest, but then you leave carrying the scent of the home with you.” For Bin Thani, that lingering scent is more than a memory. It reflects the way Emirati women have carried their culture forward, holding on to what came before while making room for what comes next. She says she has never felt she had to choose between the two.

“As an Emirati woman, I’ve never had to choose between my roots and my ambition,” she says. “We have always been taught by the women before us to carry both with us.”

Bin Thani’s own life reflects that philosophy. She has co-founded a local favorite food spot, earned a master’s degree, published a book, co-authored papers with think tanks, rides endurance horses and plays the piano.

Her journey to publishing her first book began, somewhat unexpectedly, at an office job.

While working, Bin Thani would spend her spare time writing poetry on her computer, looking for an outlet for the creativity she wasn’t finding in her day-to-day work. A colleague sitting beside her started reading the poems and loved them. Soon, the two came up with their own little agreement: Bin Thani would send her three or four poems a week.

For nearly a year, the poems kept coming. Then, on Bin Thani’s birthday, her friend surprised her with a complete manuscript of her own writing.

“It’s stuff you hear in the movies,” she says. But behind the almost too-perfect story was something Bin Thani says she is deeply grateful for: a woman who saw something in her before she fully saw it in herself.

“I’m very grateful for women supporting women,” she says. “I wouldn’t have been able to publish my book if it wasn’t for her pushing me through." Sometimes, she says, it really does take another woman believing in you to make you believe in yourself.

Writing also forced her to confront a side of herself she had previously kept hidden. Growing up, she describes herself as a “wildcard” someone more likely to rock climb and jump off cliffs than sit quietly and write poetry. Yet writing became a way of understanding herself differently.

Publishing her work, she adds, gave her the confidence to show more of herself. “There is always this fear to share who you are,” she says. “Now that I’ve started publishing books, I feel like I can do this. I can show you more of me, and I can be okay with that.”

For someone who has spent years learning how to juggle different roles, Bin Thani has also had to learn when not to. She says she once measured success by how much she could accomplish and how quickly she could do it. Her definition has changed.

“Today, I look at success way differently, way more forgiving with myself,” she says. That means accepting pauses, whether she is at home, raising a baby or simply dealing with the demands of everyday life.

“You don’t need to juggle everything at once,” she says. “Success to me is that comfort, and being able to take a pause and know that you’re not missing out on anything.”

It is a strikingly different definition of ambition: not doing everything, all the time, but knowing that taking a step back does not mean falling behind.

What makes me hopeful is that I can already see the future happening where highly impactful women...” she says, pointing to the growing presence of young Emirati women in positions of influence.

She recalls seeing a 22-year-old Emirati woman become the world's youngest government minister, and the significance of women now sitting at tables where decisions about the country's future are being made.

“And I see it in my own life, too,” she says. “I was given more opportunities than the women who came before me, and my only responsibility is to make sure that the women who come after me inherit even more opportunities.”

And maybe that is the most fitting way to celebrate Emirati Women's Day: by recognising not only how far Emirati women have come, but how much further the women who follow them will go.