Research seminar by professor Rania KAMLA

Department : Accounting and Management Control

Speaker : Rania KAMLA (University of Edinburgh)

Room : building V room Ramanantsoa and by Zoom : https://hec-fr.zoom.us/j/99070775748

“Flourishing careers in the desert? The experiences of migrant women accountants in the UAE”

Abstract

The paper explores the perceptions and experiences of women accountants in a non-Western context of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Through the lens of Transnational Feminism, it advances fresh insights around gender and accounting under globalization and migration. Semi-structured interviews with 26 migrant women accountants from different nationalities, living and working in the UAE were conducted. Findings show that, contrary to dominant stereotypes of professional women experiences in the Arab Middle East, participants perceived the UAE to present an enabling environment where many migrant women felt empowered and privileged because of the freedom and safety they enjoyed, affordability of house-help as well as the various career opportunities available to them as qualified women in an emerging capital market, in comparison to their home countries. Privileges and opportunities notwithstanding, the women also experienced patriarchal conditions characteristic of the accounting profession globally, including being trailing wives, global division of labor based on nationality, race and ethnicity, and their associated gendered practices. These findings emphasize the importance of context and appropriate theoretical lenses to help unravel peculiarities of immigration in the context of the Global South, and hence avoiding the dangers of a single narrative around women experiences in the profession.