Redefining the "Ideal Qatari Woman" in the 21st Century: The Role of Qatari Women in Nation Building and Branding

This dissertation identifies and critiques essentialist narratives of the “ideal Qatari woman” produced by the Qatari state in the 21st century and analyzes the diverse and variegated (re)formulation of gender roles and norms by Qatari women themselves. Drawing from qualitative interview data and a range of primary sources (e.g., state-run media, institutional media, digital and print magazines, state laws and documents, etc.), this dissertation offers a comprehensive study of the oft neglected but central role of Qatari women in nation building and branding. I employ the tools of transnational feminist theory, as well as the methodologies of feminist ethnography and critical discourse analysis, to identify discourses produced about Qatari women’s shifting roles in the nation and the home and to offer new insight into Qatari women’s varied understandings of gender equality and feminism. With particular attention to Qatari rulers’ anxieties surrounding a growing migrant population, the gaze of a Western audience, and regional and domestic pressures, I argue that the Qatari state is constructing and recruiting an educated and socioeconomically privileged class of “ideal Qatari women” to carry out its state-branding and nation-building agendas. This ideal is constructed in opposition to the nation’s female domestic workers, who are intentionally marginalized from the state’s projects. Furthermore, I contend that Qatari rulers are implementing a form of state patriarchy that merges nationalist ideals with neoliberal feminist paradigms, creating structures through which the state polices women’s roles in the public and domestic spheres under the guise of paternalistic protection and support for women’s empowerment. Finally, I demonstrate how Qatari women’s active (re)formulation of their roles in the nation challenges the elite production of gender norms, revealing cracks in the state’s patriarchal system and resistance to its hegemonic discourses on women’s empowerment.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Graduate College

Grantor dc:publisher

The University of Arizona.

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Liloia, Alainna

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Hudson, Leila

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Nassar, Maha
• Clancy-Smith, Julia
• Soto, Sandra

• Arab Gulf
• Migrant Labor
• Nation Building
• Qatari Women
• Transnational Feminism
• Women's Education

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10150/667600

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.arizona.edu:10150/667600