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?

Well both sexes ignore it & I don't
think it's hard to understand why.

We buy all sorts of crap from countries like China cause it cheap, do we care about the lives & treatment of those who make it?
Air travel in general has a huge impact on climate change which causes problems like drought in other countries.
Avocados are pretty unethical but we still eat them.
I could go on & on.

The problem is most nations you would travel to would have terrible human rights records, yes? Including the U.S? India. Thailand. Sri Lanka. China. Pakistan. Russia.

I imagine the pampered and rather dim rich don't give a flying fuck as long as they get insta likes.

@TakeTheCuntOutOfScunthorpe you said it better then me.

@HermioneWeasley

They don’t care. It’s as simple as that. Dubai has a horrifying human rights record - yes the hotels are spectacular, but they are built with slave Labour. But people will turn a blind eye because it’s a cheap sunshine holiday and that’s more important to them.

Yep..and TBF lets not pick on any specific gender.

Many people looking for a winter sun holiday (or were, when such was allowed) see the promises of 5 star service in a superficially spectacular hotel, guaranteed sun and most of all "the sticker price" on the website/in the brochure, and don't look any further.

I’ve been watching Jack Ryan on Netflix and Turkey doesn’t look too great either. Trafficking of Syria women from the beaches of Turkey. I know it’s a drama but I bet there is some truth in it.

Most of my friends go and love it, I love them all dearly and know that they are intelligent, genuinely lovely people but I have never been able to understand how any of them can't see this! In most other areas of their lives they are pro equality and human rights so I really don't get how they can go there with a clear conscience. I have never had the conversation with them because I wouldn't want them to think I was judging their choices, I just accept we all like different things! My idea of a good holiday is very different than theirs generally.

@Frequentflier

The problem is most nations you would travel to would have terrible human rights records, yes? Including the U.S? India. Thailand. Sri Lanka. China. Pakistan. Russia.

You don't often see people on SM posing on a beach there, Pina Colada in hand.

I mean how many people in the UK take drugs but simultaneously recoil when they see another stabbing of a young kid in the paper?

I have never had the conversation with them because I wouldn't want them to think I was judging their choices, I just accept we all like different things!

But this isn't about liking different things, is it- unless you think they like the fact that they are supporting a regime which treats women like dirt and is guilty of really appalling human rights abuses as standard... in which case I would very much be judging them, wanting them to know I judged them, and not wanting them in my life.

Because turning a blind eye doesn't cost them anything
No one whose opinion is of any consequence will think less of them

The thing I found interesting was that the woman being interviewed said that many western men take advantage of the laws there to abuse/deprive western women too - its why you often see MNers urging caution, ESPECIALLY if they have kids, before moving out there with their partners

I agree. I would never holiday in Dubai either.

But I also come from Singapore which treats foreign workers horribly but yet I don't see Singapore in the same way. Singapore also has the death penalty and executes drug runners without exception (many of whom are victims coerced to work by the drug lords). I think most countries have problems with human rights though but it would be a pity not to visit these countries because of their governments.

However, dubai is a different story because from what i perceive, it has no culture and the people who go there just like being pampered in a 5 star hotel

[quote redheadwitch]This was an interesting read; from a female ex-pat living in the Middle East. She addresses many of the points raised here so far.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/AMA/3312838-I-live-in-Saudi-Arabia-AMA[/quote]
Yes but isn't a little bit like a hamster writing how nice their cage is? The Crown Prince is lovely and I live in my compound.

Intelligent people who know the background are even worse than SM fools.

You’re right ... my father lives there and says it’s a wonderful country . He’s also lived in various other similar places and equally enjoyed those experiences .

As a lesbian, and a woman, I won’t visit him - at all . I have zero intention of ever going there .

It isn’t just women who should be held accountable for visiting places like Dubai, its men as well.

There are lots of places I refuse to travel to or even travel through due to human rights abuses. You really can’t value human rights while choosing to fund an awful regime, which is exactly what visitors to Dubai are doing.

I genuinely think some people would holiday in North Korea if they had cheap luxury hotels and nice beaches.

I wouldn't go, and personally I would like sanctions against these countries for their abuse of women. Obv that ain't gonna happen.

Frequentflier
The problem is most nations you would travel to would have terrible human rights records, yes? Including the U.S? India. Thailand. Sri Lanka. China. Pakistan. Russia.

You don't often see people on SM posing on a beach there, Pina Colada in hand.

What not even Thailand? Goa? The Maldives don’t have a great human rights record either. Let’s make it unfashionable and unacceptable to go there too.

I genuinely think some people would holiday in North Korea if they had cheap luxury hotels and nice beaches.

100%

Playground for vacuous airheads

I went to Abu Dhabi and was horrified, but it was years ago and certainly not a glamourised holiday as I was visiting family

Given we are better informed now there is no excuse really!

because the human rights issues are not something that are immediately obvious there, they continently ignore them.

Whilst I abhor the treatment of women (and actually, often of men too) in some countries - not just the UAE - I think people need to be cautious. What we consider to ne human rights (or think we do) is not necessarily the same thing as what others define as human rights. Equally, assuming that we are "better at" human rights ignores the infringements of human rights that exist in our own societies.

What has happened to Princess Latifa is, of course, entirely wrong and it is entirely unacceptable hold someone prisoner who has not committed a crime. Quite rightly people are expressing a view on this and bringing pressure to bear. But it is my experience that broader differences of opinion are better tackled by dialogue rather than condemnation. I do not agree with the way women are treated in some other countries (or, for that matter, often in the UK) but when we discuss and debate we may influence and perhaps change things, albeit more slowly than we would perhaps hope. When we condemn we leave people with no alternative - we say they are wrong, and they say we are wrong, and that is where nothing changes at all.

@CounsellorTroi

Frequentflier The problem is most nations you would travel to would have terrible human rights records, yes? Including the U.S? India. Thailand. Sri Lanka. China. Pakistan. Russia.

You don't often see people on SM posing on a beach there, Pina Colada in hand.

What not even Thailand? Goa? The Maldives don’t have a great human rights record either. Let’s make it unfashionable and unacceptable to go there too.

In my view, it is entirely unacceptable to go to the Maldives, where victims of rape are stoned. It's a conservative religious regime, but villas on stilts! environmentally ruinous options at the many restaurants with imported everything! (ditto the environmental point for Dubai - it's a fricking desert. Every bottle of evian and californian wine and OUTDOOR AIR CONDITIONING makes me clench my buttocks so hard I may have an insta-worthy arse by the end of this thread)

one could argue that it is better to engage with and trade with these countries because that gives some chance of leverage, some way to incentivise them to change to line up with the norms of modern liberal democracies
It's probably a pretty thin argument though😳

I've never had any inclination to visit Dubai for these reasons. Also I don't see it as glamourous, bit 'only way is Essex' for me.

When you see an insta model going to Dubai they are usually prostituting and get treated so bad themselves.