Ms Tina Dias
Ms Tina Dias is pursuing her MSc in Business Psychology at Heriot-Watt University in Dubai. She has over 14 years of experience in Marketing and Communications and is currently at Emirates Airline. She has a keen interest in workplace well-being and empowering working mothers.
Competing Devotions: How Expatriate Women and Men Experience the Duality of Career and Family in the UAE
The UAE is a multi-cultural working environment with a large number of businesses and employees from overseas. For example, 89% of the population are expatriate and many of the private-sector companies have adopted international best practices in Human Resource management. Nevertheless, for the expatriate population, a number of social issues pertaining to the family and child-rearing support remain when working in this context including limited extended family support, and traditional or semi-traditional gender roles with a reliance on paid support for children in the form of nannies. There is a lack of research on the experience of parenting and family roles in this context, how expatriate families have adjusted to the different demands of the UAE working environment, and how work-life balance is maintained.
A qualitative explorative study was designed to understand how men and women experience the dual roles of work and family and the impact on career perception and progression. Data was collected from 13 participants through semi-structured interviews. Participants were employed in the private sector in the UAE, from a variety of nationalities and all actively balancing work and family commitments. Thematic analysis revealed a pattern of increased invisible mental workload among working mothers and a constant struggle to balance their professional and family roles, often resulting in reprioritising or slowing their career progression at key stages of family life to accommodate family needs, or sacrificing their well-being to strike a balance between both. Conversely, working fathers did not experience similar conflicting feelings, nor did they experience an increase in daily mental workload as they were more vested in long-term planning for the family. Findings highlighted that the need to balance career and career progression was compounded by a lack of organisational flexibility and policies that support women's well-being. There is a need for change in organisational policies to encourage women to aspire for career progression in spite of their family needs, giving them the confidence and reassurance that organisational policies understand and support their unique needs, so they can rise up to the challenge.
Keywords: Work devotion, family devotion, career perception, career progression, mental workload, work-family conflict, motherhood penalty