When I think about strong Emirati women , I do not first think about titles, positions, or boardrooms. I think about the women we grew up with. I think about our mothers and grandmothers who managed homes, families, responsibilities and, sometimes, finances.
They know what was happening in their communities. They preserved our traditions, our stories and our language. They carried enormous responsibilities without describing it as “leadership”.
But that is exactly what it was. This is why one word in this year’s Emirati Women’s Day theme stands out to me, it’s the “we” in “ We Emerge Stronger and Better” .
It is a small word, but I think it says something important about the Emirati culture and experience. The progress of Emirati women has never been an individual story. It’s a national one.
Since the early years of the UAE, women were given the opportunity to participate in the community and to be educated, this always have been part of the country’s development under the leadership of His Highness Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. And when the General Women’s Union was established in 1975, under the leadership of Her Highness Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, Mother of the Nation, she gave that commitment an institutional voice.
The generations that followed were encouraged to study, work, lead and contribute. Families played their part. Leadership played its part. Institutions played their part. And women themselves took those opportunities and continued building on them.
That distinction matters, especially for those of us working in communications.
Sometimes we borrow the international language of women’s empowerment without asking whether it really tells our story. The familiar narrative is often about woman fighting alone to break through barriers. There are places where that is the right story. But I do not believe it fully represents the UAE. Our story is more collective.
Behind many successful Emirati women there is a family that believed in her, a teacher who encouraged her, a colleague who supported her, a leader who trusted her, and a country that created opportunities for her.
That does not make her achievements any smaller. It makes the story bigger!
I also believe that we should tell that story in our own language. For those of us in communications and marketing, Arabic should not be something we arrive at after English campaigns has already been developed.
When we are speaking about our identity, our people, our history, Arabic carried something a translation cannot always reproduce, and the same applies to heritage.
Heritage is not simply a Sadu pattern added to a design in August. It is our expressions, our conversations, our poetry, our conversations and memories passed between generations in our Majlis.
There is so much richness there if we choose to use it. And most importantly Emirati women should not become visible only during Emirati Women’s Day.
We should see the doctor working through the night, the government employee quietly shaping a policy, the teacher taking children through sessions, the entrepreneur building something from the ground up and the young writer finding her voice. These women may never appear in campaigns, but they are part of the story too.
More than fifty years into the UAE’s journey, perhaps the greatest sign of progress is when we see an Emirati woman excel, it is no longer unusual.
A young Emirati girl can look at a laboratory, a race track, a courtroom, the Olym…