How do women square holidaying in Dubai with the lived reality of UAE women?

[Bouncealot]

Never understood a friend raving about the luxury, lack of crime, cleanliness, attentiveness of hotel and retail staff, when I had watched documentaries on slave labour, especially Philippine and Pakistani people denied passports, sleeping on kitchen floors and UAEs refusal to give stats on FGM to WHO. Just listened to Woman’s Hour discussion on the Princess Latifa case. It seems not a subject for discussion when people are planning ‘sunshine breaks’.
IABU judge other women’s holiday choices and experiences?

I'd rather gnaw my own arm off than go to any country where women are regarded as property. It's fucking primitive and vile.

LexMitior

Its all built on slavery and yes you should judge people who endorse going there. We could have the same society in the UK overnight if we were prepared to have slaves and strip people of their human rights and dignity.

I absolutely agree with you. Sadly slavery and striping human beings of any dignity, is very much what gives Britain it's wealth today.

Doesn't matter how long ago it was, they were only concerned with making as much as possible making slave ships and packing human beings in like sardines to build their empire.

@poppyzbrite4

Western men take advantage of it. You think that we are so progressive but we're not. The only thing protecting us from the same scenario is the law. I was living in Asia and western men were exploiting women in poverty. They also exploit lack of child protection. I often came up against Western men with a chip on their shoulders about Western women. They actually moved to countries lacking in human rights laws to take advantage of women desperate to leave.

Too right poppyzbrite4. I lived in Taiwan for a while and there were some real sleazebags there getting involved with the local women for just this reason. And I saw a couple of western men on beach holidays with little children which I didnt understand at the time. Gross.

@Wearywithteens

I think women are being treated with the same level of contempt in parts of the western world right now!

Sadly, all the people I personally know who love a holiday in Dubai are deadheads who wouldn’t even think beyond what bikini to pack, let alone issues of modern day slavery or the treatment of women.

This

Excuse me but abortion is legal in Ireland. So is same sex marriage and being gay is not illegal. The catholic church no longer has any hold over the people nor the government.

Ireland has changed out of recognition from my suffocating, oppressive childhood, where as a girl/woman I could not enter church without a mantle/veil covering my head and we prayed to the sound of the Angelus bell three times a day, the other prayers were at different times and for different reasons. The people voted on these changes, it's called a democracy.
And yes, here in England our neglect and disdain of the poor, working or not is a disgrace but unfortunately that's our democracy.

I think YAB a bit U. The same could be said for travelling to half the countries in the world. The UAE isnt my cup of tea for many reasons but I certainly have and will travel to many countries whose human rights record isnt stellar.

@BluebelllsRosesDaffodills um excuse you, you can get abortions in Ireland now. And there is same sex marriage. Do your research please.

I actually agree with you about the further points in your post re: London and people's perception of Muslim countries. But don't use your ignorance towards Ireland to prop up your argument.

I think people here complain more about Dubai
We can complain, we are permitted to loud and clear if we have half a brain that is.

@SandyY2K - yes, this was a horrible part of our history. Britain is wealthy, but stopped overtly profitting or running slavery some time ago.

I think we would agree that the British society that we live in today is better than that and that what is replicated in Dubai and other countries is not something we want to return to. As individuals, we can make our own assessment in the here and now if it is a place we want to go. For me, no.

There seems to be a lot of attempts to whitewash various peoples now because everywhere else is as bad; there also seems to be a lot of effort going in to a cynicism about all efforts to make the world better. I found this an interesting read regarding supposed British culpability for everything going wrong in the Islamic Middle East. www.hoover.org/research/truth-about-western-colonialism

Politics there are complex but I would never want to support cultures that would relegate me to sexual slavery as standard and I do not like women who do.

@whataboutbob

Having lived in both cultures I can say that for me at least, sexual harassment in Muslim countries I lived in or visited was much more frequent, intense and intimidating than anything I experienced in Europe.

Absolutely, which is why I'm glad my dd is growing up here and not my dh's country. It's apparently got worse in the last decade.

Brilliant op.

Was thinking the same earlier today.

Let’s not forget either that Islam in the Middle East has in the past and even in the present, met, incorporated and encompassed huge numbers of varying traditions. The Middle East holds some of humanity’s oldest peoples and ways of life. We do them or ourselves no favours when we support the current authoritarian trajectories over there, religious and otherwise.

Interesting read @MayYouLiveInInterestingTimes - the Hoover Institution does have a Conservative, right wing bias which is worth bearing in mind when you read it.

One of the previous PPs has commented on how domestic staff in Dubai are largely female. Actually no, or at least they weren’t in my time living there. There are many male ‘houseboys’.

The attitude of tourists not wanting to see beyond the beaches and shopping and aqua parks but not so much that many (not all by any means) Western ex pats are pretty complicit to the poor treatment of third world workers and do themselves have ‘houseboys’ and ‘house girls’. In many ways it’s neo colonialism and there is an attitude of not closely biting the hand that feeds and its ok to pay a trained accountant from India peanuts to clean your gaff as it’s more than they’d earn at home. I did challenge a couple of them on calling their cleaners ‘houseboys’ to their complete confusion and adamant assertions that actually their cleaners were really happy to be called that!

Arghh!

Quick edit : ‘the attitude of tourists.. has been talked about but not so much that many (not all by any means) Western ex-pats..’.

I can't and don't. It's one of many issues I have with the UAE
I turned down a really well paid project there because I couldn't square it for this and other reasons but also the fact that I would be the senior project lead (so the boss) but would be working with people who thought I should have less rights than them because of my sex, outside of the office. 🤔🤬😳

I read left and right, thanks. Left wing ethics are looking odder and odder to me, for all I lean left economically. I also read travel writing and history of the Middle East. It’s got room for all manner of perspectives, in terms of variety.

Loads of holiday destinations have poor laws, safety, human rights, education, equality etc.

I bet lots of the clothes in your wardrobe and gadgets around the house weren't ethically made. The issue isn't with holiday makers/consumers. It's with local and global political systems. At least trade increases jobs.

God I really should have checked my facts and not relied on my rubbish memory here! Apologies @LexMitior, the relationship with the British goes back to 1820 not the end of the Ottoman Empire. Big huge fail on my part!

No idea. I would not visit.

@SJaneS49

Thank you for the correction, it is always good to have facts!

It's not somewhere I'd want to go. I think going there for a quick holiday to experience it isn't the same as living and working there, earning an insane amount more than the citizens and having an army of servants though.

Although people that work there possibly get a kick out of the servants/special treatment/massive wages as some sort of power trip.

@LexMitior

*@SandyY2K - yes, this was a horrible part of our history. Britain is wealthy, but stopped overtly profitting or running slavery some time ago.

The slave trade stopped, but the profitting continued till quite recently. It wasn't enough that black Africans were treated so inhumanely, yet years later descendants of slave traders were still profitting.

It's amazing that the enlightened westernised UK Government could justify it.

You'd think with the passage of time, the morality about the origins of the cruel way this money came to be would be enough for it to cease.

Yet the descendants happily accepted these payments in full knowledge. Shocking really.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/taxpayers-still-paying-british-slave-12019829.amp

Just three years ago, taxpayers were still paying off government debt borrowed to pay millions in 'compensation' to wealthy slave owners.

While some were well aware of the payments, which finally stopped in 2015, a lot of people had no idea modern Brits were paying off money the British Treasury gave to people made rich through human suffering.

@SandyY2K - well, I can't argue with that and the ethics of compensating slave owners at the time of abolition is repulsive revolting in today's eyes. Is it racist and horrible, yes. But the purpose to end the then legal trade in slavery, and the effect, also fact. That the Treasury thought the money being paid was something worth celebrating shows the tone deaf nature of our institutions.