Using a combined quantitative, quantitative approach this study explores the incongruence between educational attainment and labor force participation for Emirati women by posing several questions that revolve around the issue of their motivations and aspirations with regard to higher education and labor force participation. In interpreting the survey and interview responses, a conceptual framework that interweaved constructs taken from three different bodies of research was used. The three areas of research are: the expectations of women in higher education, family in the Arab world, and the importance of social networks in employment.The findings of the study showed that Emirati women have high educational and occupational aspirations but they are also ambiguous about the role of women in Emirati society. This ambiguity arose from the conflict between what the young women in the study believed they ought to achieve as a result of their education and what they perceived their society expected of them as daughters, wives and mothers. The link between education and employment for Emirati women was also found to be influenced by the close nature of the social networks to which Emirati women belong. Emirati's women's use of family or strong ties deprives them of information from distant parts of the social system and places them at in a disadvantaged position in the labor market.

The Ministry of Education in Abu Dhabi launched an extensive reform initiative developed by the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) in partnership with international operators. The reform has introduced innovative teaching methodologies, modern books, a new curriculum and the use of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) in mathematics and science classes. The research carried out for this thesis investigated 11 Emirati female teachers. The data was collected from interviews and several informal observations carried out in a public middle school in a town outside Abu Dhabi city, UAE. The rationale for this study is to critically investigate the effects that rapid reform is having on the performance of the female teachers in the classroom and the impact of this speedy reform on their professional and personal lives so as to highlight differences between reform theory and practice. This study is significant because few studies on female teachers in a Gulf educational reform environment have been undertaken and it is essential to uncover the foreign and non-egalitarian nature of the reform programme. Therefore, the study’s aims are to highlight teacher perspectives and teacher marginalization, EMI and consider whether the reform is being implemented successfully at the classroom level. Of course, an important aim of this critical study has also been to raise the consciousness of those participating in the reform. This study has revealed mostly negative perceptions regarding the Abu Dhabi education reform programme, in particular with teachers’ perceptions of the work environment and the new pedagogy. It has also disclosed several instances of teacher marginalization as the result of a top-down reform and has exposed a prevailing sentiment of teacher disempowerment because of the presence of foreigners operating in the country. Teacher perceptions regarding EMI have been numerous in particular with cultural issues relating to the use of EMI in mathematics and science classes. Surprisingly, the study revealed a few unexpected positive findings with certain aspects of reform.

This dissertation in Middle Eastern Studies explores the creation of national identity through visual media in the contemporary United Arab Emirates. Within a framework of cultural and media studies the thesis analyses how forms of representation are negotiated by Emirati media producers. The research tests the applicability of cultural theories developed by Appadurai and Eickelman in the context of the Gulf Region. The UAE media industry is considered within a network of global media companies. The local industry's interaction with global media production companies illustrates a constructed divide between local and global identities. This creates specific patterns of media making and influences local audience perceptions of different narratives and representations. The research uses qualitative methods, based on interviews and focus groups conducted between September 2009 and April 2010 in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The interviewees were Emirati media professional and Students of Media Communication. They discuss how media producers and television presenters try to reconcile their notions of what a national media should be with the restrictive structure of the industry. The interviews demonstrate the challenges of a government-controlled national media for the development of a public dialogue on national identity and confirm that the state-controlled television and film industry, does not account for the diversity of the Emirati community of nationals. The criticism of Emirati representation in the media is accompanied by a feeling of stagnation and inability to change the existing patterns. It results in their turning away towards commercial media. Going beyond an analysis of restrictive media praxis, the research provides an inside perspective on the complex issue of contemporary Emirati identity.

This ethnographic case study explored the insights and experiences of a small selection of working graduates from Dubai Women's College. Based on a literature review and a preliminary study, the following themes were identified and employed as stimuli for discussion: the balance between work and family responsibilities, gender issues in the workplace, issues of power relationships for women, coping with restrictions in an Arabic Islamic environment, reasons for work, and sources of influence and satisfaction. The research utilized feminist post-structural theory to collect the data and then analyze and interpret the comments made by the women. Self-reflexivity and transparency of the positionality of the researcher were critical in this research that relied on an unstructured personal interview approach. The research resulted in a rich description of the thoughts and concerns of five diverse women. Through discourse analysis, the dominant socio-cultural discourses in the areas of gender, marriage, kinship, ethnicity, meritocracy, materialism and religion that women interact with in this cultural environment were identified. The extent to which the women take up, disrupt and challenge these discourses was also explored with a view to suggest ways to 'better' women's lives. Implications of this study include an agenda for increased emancipation of women by greater freedom of choice through self awareness and the development of potential strategies to support empowerment.

Ce travail de recherche se propose de revenir sur l'histoire médiatico-politique de l'Égypte comme élément central de l'espace public arabe, dans un cadre régional prenant en compte d’autres pays périphériques tels que le Qatar, le Koweït ou l'axe Saoudo-Émirati.Il invite en particulier à une réflexion sur la(-les) politique(-s) communicationnelle(-s) à l’œuvre sous les différents gouvernements de ce que l’on peut appeler la « République des officiers », expression reprise à Yazid Sayegh pour désigner les prises de pouvoir successives de l’Égypte contemporaine par des militaires de profession, à savoir Nasser, Sadate, Moubarak et enfin Sissi.Du journalisme arabiste de résistance offensive à partir des années cinquante jusqu’au développement commercial des médias dans les années quatre-vingt, il sera question d’un examen approfondi de la démarche informationnelle et journalistique des régimes en place, en lien avec les diverses sphères de l’espace public, c’est-à-dire les intellectuels, religieux, ou encore activistes de tous ordres issus de la société civile. Le rôle du régime cosmopolitique fera l’objet d’une analyse également, non pas tant comme phénomène transnational de pacification mondiale au sens d’Ulrich Beck, mais tel que cette instance informelle est exploitée et dévoyée par l’administration américaine et la haute représentation européenne à des fins moins altruistes.Avec la création d’Aljazeera en 1996, signant l’avènement d’un néo-panarabisme communicationnel promu cette fois par un micro-État rentier des pays du Golfe, le Qatar, c’est un vent nouveau qui va souffler sur le traitement télévisuel des questions politiques dans le monde arabe, faisant réagir les autres pays de la péninsule et entraînant la naissance d’une pléthore de chaînes arabes, commerciales pour la plupart. Le développement des réseaux sociaux et des nouvelles technologies de l’information en général ne sont pas oubliés, amenant à interroger les mutations de ce système médiatique qui se complexifie. Entre le schéma de co-isolation dans lequel s’inscrit l’évolution de la chaîne qatarie et le projet contre-révolutionnaire auquel participe financièrement l'axe Saoudo-Emirati suite à l’élection de Morsi, inaugurant dès lors une période de l'absurde politique se généralisant à l'ensemble des interstices de l'espace public régional, il s’agira de décrypter tout particulièrement les paradoxes du système, en articulation avec la notion d’éthique et le concept de reconnaissance. / This research purports to retrace the media and political history of Egypt, as a central element of Arab public space, within a wider regional framework constituted of peripheral countries such as Qatar, Kuwait or the Saudi-Emirati axis.It invites more particularly to a reflection upon the communicational politics at work under the respective governments of what can be called the “Republic of officers”, a phrase borrowed from Yazid Sayegh to designate the successive takeovers of contemporary Egypt by military men, namely Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, and finally Sisi.From the Arabist journalism of offensive resistance from the fifties’ on, to the commercial development of media in the late eighties’, a thorough examination of the informational and journalistic approach of the regimes in power will be undertaken. This will be linked with the diverse spheres of the public space, i.e. the intellectuals, religious, and all kinds of activists from the civil society. The role played by the cosmopolitical regime will be asked too, not as much as the transnational phenomenon of global pacification in Ulrich Beck’s sense, but rather as this informal body is exploited and corrupted by the American administration and high European representation for not so altruistic aims.When Aljazeera channel was created in 1996, paving the way to a communicational neo-panarabism now promoted by a rentier micro-State of the Gulf region, namely Qatar, a new wind started to blow on the television treatment of political issues in the Arab world. The other countries of the peninsula soon responded, allowing the birth of an abundance of channels, most of which were commercial. The development of social networks and the new information technologies in general are not forgotten leading us to interrogate the mutations of this system which is getting more and more complex. In-between the scheme of co-isolation within which the evolution of the Qatari channel is inscribed and the counter-revolutionary project financially supported by the Saudi-Emirati axis after Morsi’s election, then inaugurating an era of political absurdity permeating all and every interstice of the regional public space, our point will be to decipher more particularly the paradoxes of the system, in articulation with the notion of ethics and the concept of recognition.