Structural accommodations of patriarchy: Women and workplace gender segregation in Qatar

Abstract

As the institutions of classic patriarchy erode in Qatar, women are entering the labour force in growing numbers. It is argued that women's need to work in societies historically characterized by classic patriarchy causes them to enact strategic accommodations that signal their feminine respectability and conformity to male domination. We find the Qatari context to be characterized by structural rather than individual accommodations of patriarchy. State institutions and several employers have made available gender‐segregated workplaces that facilitate women's employment while maintaining many elements of patriarchy. Using semi‐structured interview data with university‐aged Qatari women, we examine attitudes towards employment, specifically those related to gender mixing in the workplace. Young women's narratives reveal complex schemas regarding the acceptability of gender mixing, which depends on characteristics of the working woman, characteristics of the men with whom she must interact in the workplace and the spatial organization of the workplace itself. Women's protection of their reputations, critical to maintaining their families’ support and their own marriageability, emerged as a key motivation for limiting interactions with men. The preference for gender‐segregated workplaces reveals Qatari women's continued subscription to the patriarchal bargain — they constrain their behaviour in return for protection from male kin.