Along with questions such as “are you allowed to drink?” and “do you have to cover your head?”, the question about whether women are allowed to work in the UAE is one most expats are asked by those unfamiliar with the country.
True, compared to somewhere like the UK, the UAE probably has an abnormally high proportion of expatriate stay-at-home mums. But this isn’t because they’re not “allowed” to work, rather because many Western families here can afford to live on one salary, so they have the option of having one parent stay at home.
And, with schools finishing in the middle of the day, proper part-time jobs rarer than a rainy day and no grandparents to help out, it’s impractical for many expat women without family support to even attempt to work in the corporate world while their children are small. For some, that’s a frustration in itself.
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