Emirati Women: Generations of Change by Jane Bristol-Rhys (review)

In Emirati Women: Generations of Change, Jane Bristol-Rhys draws on eight years of ethnographic research to share knowledge from and about a rarely-studied population. Bristol-Rhys focuses on women from Abu Dhabi in particular, considering their perspectives on the rapid social changes that oil-fueled economic development spurred in the emirate. The book is structured around the contrasting perspectives of three generations of Emirati women: grandmothers who were raised and who raised their children in the poor, pre-oil period, middle-aged women who were children in the 1960s and 1970s when conditions were shifting, and university students who were raised in wealth. These women's narratives are augmented with rich historical background drawn from secondary sources.

The changes spurred by economic development have not been all positive. With the formation of a wealthy state, women lost power, freedom, and independence. In the past, the women of ruling families wielded political power and average women had greater influence too, controlling the family finances and date harvest when men departed for pearl diving. As the country developed, women drove important social changes, pushing for the inclusion of women and girls in education and for women's right to work.

One informant sums up ambivalence that is common among now middle-aged Emirati women, stating that the older generation is one of "strong women who worked, gave birth alone in the desert, ran farms and sold fish in the market," while her own generation is "lazy" (81). These women express guilt over not knowing how to cook, having domestic help who handle child-rearing responsibilities, and filling days with leisure activities rather than paid employment. The grandmothers of the older generation likewise lament a loss of community and traditions, worrying that their granddaughters lack knowledge and understanding of the past. Young Emiratis, Bristol-Rhys tells us, view the pre-oil period as a "black hole devoid of meaning or relevance," positing that acknowledging the poverty of the past is uncomfortable for all Emiratis (120).

Wealth, and perhaps natural resource wealth in particular, has contributed to new restrictions on and responsibilities for women. Family status stands to increase with the suggestion that the women of a given family require protection from public view. This has implications for women's freedom of movement. Bristol-Rhys describes how some of her university students are not allowed to go on field trips beyond the city of Abu Dhabi. She notes an increase in those subject to such restrictions as students and those whose families seek to emulate the higher restrictions of more powerful families (67).

Development has brought radical changes to the spaces of the city, changes with wide-reaching implications for women in particular. New spaces of leisure—hotels, restaurants, coffee shops, and movie theaters— are not freely accessible to young Emirati women, who generally require an accompanying brother or father. Women are also under pressure to maintain a particular appearance in public as they represent the family's image, and assessments of their comportment may be a factor in their marriage prospects. When women do enter these new urban spaces, it is often for lavish weddings held at hotels or to shop in malls, activities that while seeming leisurely, are undergirded by pressures to maintain status and to behave in a way that upholds rigid social standards.

Emirati women of the older generations lament the disappearance of tight-knit neighborhoods, characterizing the loss of the ability to walk to their mother or their sister's house as a loss of freedom and independence. Community life has been partly preserved in the smaller city of al Ain. Bristol-Rhys tells of escapes to a neighborhood where one family's homes fill a street as in the old days—allowing all, particularly women and children, to pass easily between relatives' residences.

The breakdown of traditional life and the tensions that arise during transition to a heterogeneous society are manifest in many poignant details...