Why Arab-Muslim Women in War Matters: A Case Study Analysis of Women in the United Arab Emirates' Armed Forces

Abstract: Knowledge about women’s participation in combat roles, yet alone in national armed forces in the Arab countries is very limited. Although more women are acquiring access to combat roles worldwide, most scholarly investigations have focused on servicewomen in the West. As the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is emerging as a rampant participant in international relations and it contributes forces to global security agendas, the objective of this thesis is to describe the inclusion of women in the United Arab Emirates’ Armed Forces. The study uses the case example of Major Mariam Al Mansouri who is the United Arab Emirates’ first female air force fighter pilot and whom dropped bombs for the intergovernmental Anti-ISIL Coalition in July/August 2014. The case study was used to describe aspects of the issues that surround the participation of females in the military of a Muslim country. Furthermore, the case study was chosen because when the participation of Major Al Mansouri was made public, it received a very gender-based coverage by the media and scholars particularly from the West. The research uses an interpretivist analysis of scholarly work and media reports from the Gulf region and the United States. This methodology was chosen due to limited public data on the Emirates’ Armed Forces. Furthermore, in a globalized world with the ease of disseminating information quickly and widely, media reports may bias international public and state perceptions of Arab countries based on how women are described by such sources of information. Neo-Orientalism was used as the theoretical framework to provide an additional perspective to the analysis. The analysis showed that the inclusion of women in the United Arab Emirates’ Armed Forces has been enabled by a top-down approach, as the state is very involved in the process. It also indicated Emirati women are joining the military for nationalistic and religious reasons. In summary, this thesis describes the inclusion of women in the United Arab Emirates' Armed Forces and it reveals how these women may play an increasingly significant role nationally and internationally. However, the participation is greeted with skepticism likely due to a perceptional bias by some Western media of the propensities towards women in Arab-Muslim countries.