Written by Emily Bryce, BA (Hons) History & Politics and International Relations.
‘Every day I am worried about my safety and my life’. The extraordinary and alarming hostage video of Dubai’s Princess Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, who has been kidnapped and held captive in a ‘villa jail’ for the past three years, dominated headlines throughout the world following its public release by BBC’s Panorama in February 2021. In 2018, Princess Latifa embarked on a mission to escape Dubai after claiming she had limited human rights, including no access to her passport. The mission failed when her escape yacht was boarded by armed men, who returned her to Dubai where she has been imprisoned ever since. Not only does the video pose many questions regarding human rights in Dubai, it is also a timely depiction of the constraints that Emirati women experience.
The princess is one of the children of Sheikh
Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the vice-president of the United Arab
Emirates (UAE) and the sovereign of Dubai. The Sheikh is best known for transforming
Dubai into the opportunity-filled tourist, business, and transport hub that it
is today. For Emirati women, however, the laws of the country can make life
incredibly restrictive.
 |
| ‘The skyscrapers of Dubai Marina’, credit: Norlando Pobre, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dubai_Marina_Skyline.jpg |
Under the constitution, women in the UAE have the same legal status, claim to titles and access to education as their male counterparts. Women also hold the right to vote, drive, work, own and inherit property. A 2020 report from the In the World Economic Forum ranked the UAE as 2nd best in the Middle East and North Africa region for gender equality. However, as a whole this region falls behind the rest of the world in terms of gender equality, so the UAE falls in 120th place overall.
As of June 2021, the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s monthly ranking of the representation of women in national parliaments, placed the UAE in the 3rd highest position in the world. A ground-breaking 50% of the UAE Federal National Council is female. Feminist writers and campaigners often discuss political representation within a country and how this has an impact on women. Anne Phillips [1] explains that at an intuitive level, an increase in the number of women elected seems likely to change the main concerns of politics, increasing the consideration given to women’s interests. The range of women’s experiences unavoidably makes defining women’s interest’s challenging.[2] Following Phillips, however, we might assume that the high female representation in the UAE would ensure that women’s interests were reflected in written law. Yet this is most certainly not the case.
Whilst women do have rights, under the Personal Status Law many of these are heavily reliant on the official approval of a male ‘guardian’, including permission to marry and divorce. This law also restricts same sex marriage. Under the laws against extramarital sex, unmarried women who fall pregnant face up to a year in prison, with no exception for rape victims. Transgender, gender non-conforming and gay people also face a series of criminalising laws. This leads us to the question, if female representation is so high within the UAE political system, why is the country still so behind others in terms of basic women rights? And equally concerning, why is Princess Latifa’s hostage situation being ignored?
 |
| Princess Latifa and Sheikh
Mohammed Al Maktoum, credit: Getty Images, source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-56085369 |
To understand why political representation is so important to feminist political research, we can turn to traditional theories of political representation. The most influential work here is Hanna Pitkin’s (1967) The Concept of Representation. Pitkin describes four categories of representation, but in the case of feminist arguments, we will only focus on descriptive and substantive representation. Descriptive representation is when an elected representative stands for a faction of society by virtue of having similar characteristics, such as the same gender. Substantive representation is where a representative seeks to advance a faction’s political interest.[3]
In recent years, the gender and politics literature has shifted away from a focus on the importance of descriptive representation and merely counting the number of women representatives. Instead, Elisabeth Evans [4], among others, argues that it is more important to actually take into account the actions of these representatives and if they are substantively representing women’s interests. This follows on from Joni Lovenduski’s claim [5] that, although making women central to politics is partially about electing and appointing more women, the incorporation of women’s concerns into the policy process is more significant.
In 2018, President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan secured the descriptive representation for Emirati women within the Federal National Council (FNC) by introducing a presidential decree that a quota of 50% of the parliament should be female. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum later tweeted commending the presidential decree, describing it as a ‘great leap forwards’. It is important to take into consideration that the FNC consists of 40 members, half of which are elected by citizens and the other half of which are selected by the rulers of each emirate. The 2019 election resulted in women winning 7 out of the possible 20 elected seats. This meant as per the new presidential decree a further 13 women would have to be appointed by the rulers of the emirates. This already poses grave concerns regarding the loyalties of these newly elected female candidates and how likely they are to support women’s interests.
Due to the trend in the gender and politics literature to emphasise substantive over descriptive representation, feminist writers have become increasingly critical of the use of quotas. Phillips [6] describes how quotas have always aroused strong resistance, even among those who claim to share the aim of women’s equality in politics. This is evident within feminist scholarship, with Mona Lee Krook and Pippa Norris [7] contending that quotas alone may not be sufficient to achieve real gender equality within parliaments. According to Judith Squires [8], although studies do suggest that a higher number of women within a parliament can influence policy aims, research has not proven categorically that the election of women per se makes a decisive difference. Along similar lines, Sarah Childs and Joni Lovenduski [9] argue that the use of sex quotas are positively correlated with, but not guaranteed to produce, higher levels of substantive representation. This feminist critique of quotas surely raises questions about why they are still being utilised.
Suzanne Dovi [10] describes six main arguments supporting the need for descriptive representation, and therefore the use of quotas. One is the ‘overlooked interests’ argument. The basis of this argument is that male representatives are unaware of how policy affects female citizens and therefore the mere existence of female representatives can work in women’s favour. However, the main argument against the use of quotas in order to improve female representation within parliaments is that female bodies do not always contain feminist minds.[11] This is a common concern in feminist scholarship, which recognises that feminism is a political ideology that is not advocated by all women. Therefore electing women who do not consider themselves feminists will not succeed in advancing a feminist agenda and may even harm it.
The example of the UAE’s Federal National Council, backs up the view that descriptive representation does not in itself lead to more attention to women’s interests and women’s rights, and indicates that quotas alone are not the answer.. Some issues of importance to women have been addressed recently within the FNC, with one law coming into effect that allowswomen access to restraining orders for the first time. However, campaigners saythis rewritten law does not go far enough. As mentioned above, women remain restricted in many aspects of their lives. Additionally, the FNC have failed to respond to requests for comment from the BBC regarding Princess Latifa’s incarceration.
Due to the FNC’s silence on the issue, Princess Latifa’s family and friends turned to the United Nations (UN) in an attempt to rectify the situation. Liz Thorssell, spokesperson for the UN Human Right office, has expressed the UN’s ‘serious concerns about Sheika Latifa’ and ‘requested that the government’s response comes as a matter of priority’ (see the full UN enquiry video above). In recent weeks, photographs of Princess Latifa apparently at a Dubai shopping mall and at Madrid airport have circulated on social media, but the Princess has still not spoken directly to the press to verify her situation. The fight for her full freedom, and the struggle for the rights of all women in the UAE, look set to continue for some time to come.
Click here for the final post in the series: Lorna Blackley on women's role in the protests in Myanmar.
[1] Phillips, A. (1998). ‘Democracy and Representation: Or, Why Should it Matter who Our Representatives Are?’, in A. Phillips (ed.), Feminism and Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.235
[2] Evans, E. (2015). The Politics of Third Wave Feminisms. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p.163.
[3] Pitkin, H. F. (1967). The Concept of Representation, Berkeley: University of California Press, p.144.
[4] Evans, The Politics of Third Wave Feminisms, p.159.
[5] Lovenduski, J. (2005). State Feminism and Political Representation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.5
[6] Phillips, ‘Democracy and Representation’, p. 229.
[7] Krook, M. L., and Norris, P. (2014). Beyond Quotas: Strategies to Promote Gender Equality in Elected Office. Political Studies, 62(1), p.2.
[8] Squires, J. (1996). Quotas for Women: Fair Representation?. Parliamentary Affairs, 49(1), p.75.
[9] Childs, S., and Lovenduski, J. (2013). ‘Political Representation’, in Waylen G. et al (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.496.
[10] Dovi, S. (2007). Theorizing Women’s Representation in the United States. Politics & Gender, 3(3), pp. 297-319.
[11] Evans, The Politics of Third Wave Feminisms, p.159
