While catching up with some friends last week, one of them, who recently welcomed a beautiful baby boy into her family, was telling me about how she had to deal with the issue of not finding a nursing room in one of the malls in Abu Dhabi.
Instructed to use the disabled bathroom when she asked around for one, she later found one of the baby clothing shops was able to accommodate her. While places like The Galleria on Al Maryah Island have nursing rooms available, many other public places lack basic facilities for mothers and their infants.
I had never thought about the issue before then and now I find it a bit odd that we have overlooked perhaps some of the most basic necessities. For a country that has made enormous strides in issues of women’s empowerment and gender equality, sometimes it is the little details we miss and these are the gaps that we need to address.
For example, if we look at a basic issue such as maternity leave, we can see that there is room for improvement. Currently the UAE offers 45 days of paid maternity leave, but the International Labour Organisation suggests a minimum of 12 weeks and highly recommends at least 14 weeks.
Countries with progressive legislation such as Denmark and Sweden prove that these initiatives do not take away from them ranking extremely high on international economic, political or social indicators. If we considered instituting shared parental leave, it could have multiple benefits such as allowing fathers to shoulder some of the responsibility as well as helping combat the bias against hiring women.
I believe it is unfair to place such a heavy responsibility solely on the shoulders of women in society. We expect them to be highly educated mothers, who are also active members of society who contribute to the nation’s economy.
Yet all of this cannot be achieved without wide support and understanding from society at large. Emirati tradition and Islam have offered women the option to stay home and embrace familial roles, going so far as to instructing husbands to be fully supportive of this choice by being the main breadwinners in the house. This makes it a viable choice with safeguards for women who choose this lifestyle.
But, as a choice, it is just as valid as women who choose to dedicate themselves to their careers or those who wish to do both. We also need to consider that many fathers do want to spend time with their newborns but the social expectation is that this is not their domain or responsibility.
Instead of arguing about whether women can “really have it all” we should instead be thinking about how to enable them to make the balance easier. We could start by redistributing some of the burden so that it is not solely carried by women. We should also stop assuming that women’s personal choices are society’s to dictate and instead we could put all the correct support systems in place to make their lives easier.
We need to offer women a variety of options to empower them to make decisions about how to balance work and family duties. Whether it be shorter work hours for new mothers, some type of work-from-home scheme, an increase in the number of nurseries and day cares available (especially within large organisations and entities) or instituting new maternal or paternal leave policies.
Culturally, the position of a mother is cherished in the Emirates, but I think there is an assumption that once she gives birth, she will either stay at home and decide to dedicate her whole time to the child or hire help and automatically get back to work in order to “prove” that a child will not deter her from her career.
Most people fall somewhere between the two and we need to address issues that affect their decisions.
As the world evolves, social expectations need to evolve and we need to be innovative in the ways we address problems and the solutions we come up with.
Fatima Al Shamsi is a globetrotting Emirati, foodie, film buff and football fanatic
