Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference Proceedings Volume 2016 Issue 1
- تاريخ المؤتمر: 22-23 Mar 2016
- الموقع: Qatar National Convention Center (QNCC), Doha, Qatar
- رقم المجلد: 2016
- المنشور: ٢١ مارس ٢٠١٦
651 - 656 of 656 نتائج
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Qatari Women's Engagement in Politics
المؤلفون: Noor Khalifa Al-TamimiAbstract for Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference 2016 Qatari Women's Engagement in Politics By: Noor Khalifa Al-Tamaimi For the past year and a half, I have been a student researcher on the QNRF UREP grant, “Qatari Women: Engagement and Empowerment” (UREP 15-035-5-013). The grant as a whole focused on understanding the drivers and the obstacles of women's empowerment in Qatar. We focused our research on female participation in women's gatherings in the Majlis and its links to societal engagement. I was involved in several aspects of the grant project, including ethnographic observation, photography, writing the survey questionnaire, creating a documentary, and now analyzing the survey data. The survey aimed to understand the perceptions of both the Qatari males and females about a number of cultural, educational, economic, and political topics. I will be using a few of the survey findings to investigate my theory. I start my research with a puzzle: Qatari women are equally educated and equally interested in politics as Qatari men, and yet Qatari women are very underrepresented in the political sphere. Why are Qatari women choosing not to pursue politics after graduation? My analysis of our survey results points to an answer: cultural norms and social pressure. In a society where males hold the majority of influential positions women undergo a series of challenges to be noticed. Cultural norms also pressure women not to pursue a career they could excel in. Statistics show that women have virtually the same interest in local politics as men did. Yet the survey results also show that both genders believe that males make better political leaders than women do. Also, a majority of Qataris believe there is social pressure for women to focus on family instead of work. All of these findings lead to a conclusion. I suspect that women are not choosing to pursue politics because there is a substantial societal pressure women them not to pursue politics, and because of the difficulties of reaching the targeted position because of their gender. Qatar's recent development saw a statewide encouragement in developing a knowledge-based economy that requires more qualified people to pursue jobs in all spheres political, economic and scientific (Qatar National Vision 2030). Statistics show that more women are completing higher education than men, making them well educated and qualified to pursue any job (Ridge 2014; Walker 2014). Yet when it comes to joining the workforce, a number of women choose not to pursue the career their college degree qualifies them to achieve. The fact is, when it comes to pursuing work in politics or holding important political positions, there is a clear majority of men holding these positions. My preliminary research shows that Qatari men outnumber Qatari women in key political positions throughout the country: out of 29 Municipal Council members there are 2 women. Out of the 35 Majlis Al-Shura members there are no females and there is one female out of 100 male Ambassadors. Why aren't women choosing to pursue politics? Some may say that there is a lack of political interest among women. Yet my survey analysis shows no difference between Qatari women and Qatari men when asked if they were interested in local politics: The survey found that 3 of every 4 Qataris, whether male or female, are very interested or somewhat interested in local politics. And my own research into the gender of those who attend the politics programs of local universities such as Qatar University and Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar show that women outnumber men in these programs. Thus, there is substantial interest in political studies for both males and females. Is the lack of societal support the reason why we see so few women in the political sphere in Qatar? The survey results clearly show that Qatari society is divided on whether women have a place in the political sphere. 6 out of 10 Qataris believe it is acceptable for a woman to run for political office, meaning that almost 40 percent of society does not view this as acceptable. On the other hand 3 of 4 Qataris feel that men make better political leaders than women do. These results are the same for both men and women, showing that this is not a male attitude, but a societal attitude toward the place of women in the political sphere. In my opinion, these survey findings show that there is a substantial pressure on women to stay out of the political sphere. My theory is that there is a considerable social constraint from both the males and the females in the Qatari society on women not to pursue a political job. This social constraint in my opinion comes from the fact that males outnumbers females in key political positions which leads to the societal conception that women are incapable of handling key political positions. There could be several reasons behind the pressure on women not to pursue politics. Our survey found that 7 out of 10 Qataris believe there is social pressure on women to focus on family instead of work. Another reason could be the belief that men belong in politics while women do not, as almost 40 percent of Qataris believe it is not acceptable for women to run for political office. A third reason could be the cultural norm of women taking on public jobs that require them to constantly travel or appear in the media. Fourth, the fact that most political and high-positioned jobs are male dominated makes it hard for women to rise in job status. I recognize that a Qatari woman's choice not to pursue politics after graduation could be a result of many social, educational, and societal factors. Yet the research shows that females are graduating at higher rates than men, and that women are as interested in politics as men, so the small numbers of females in key political positions are indeed disappointing. This research aims to understand the reason behind women's under representation in the political sphere through our original survey research and my additional interview research in the hopes that these findings will help ease the path for more Qatari women to participate in the political sphere in the future.
References
“Economic Development.” Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics. Accessed November 14, 2015. http://www.mdps.gov.qa/portal/page/portal/gsdp_en/qatar_national_vision/Economic_development.
Qatar National Vision 2030. General Secretariat for Development Planning. July 2008.
Qatari Women: Engagement and Empowerment. $150,000 from Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation), UREP 15-035-5-013. Grant, March 29, 2014–September 29, 2015.
Ridge, Natasha. Education and the Reverse Gender Divide in the Gulf States: Embracing the Global, Ignoring the Local. New York: Teachers College Press, 2014.
Walker, Lesly. “Female University Students in Qatar Outnumber Men 2:1 - Doha News.” Doha News. June 12, 2014. Accessed November 14, 2015. http://dohanews.co/female-university-students-outnumber-males-nearly/.
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Majlis Participation and Influence
المؤلفون: Nayla Al ThaniI am submitting this abstract to report on some of the research from the study titled “Qatari Women: Engagement and Empowerment” (UREP 15-035-5-013), a grant funded by the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF), which was aimed at looking at women's empowerment and engagement in Qatar. The research focuses on the majlis setting, which has been understudied, and the function and impact of the gatherings in relation to women's empowerment. The study looks at female empowerment through social, economic, cultural, political and educational lenses. The aim is to determine what facilitates and hinders women's empowerment in Qatar. My role in the research was as a student researcher. I contributed with the ethnographic research, writing the survey questionnaire, and producing a documentary that will be shown in Ajyal Film Festival 2015. We conducted two surveys for the purposes of this study; the latter survey, which collected responses from a nationally representative sample of male and female Qataris in December 2014 and January 2015, is the focus of my research. (Additional details on the methodology can be found at the end of this abstract.) My research focuses on the relationship between majlis participation and the sense of political efficacy and free speech. I argue that Qatari majlis participants are more likely to feel a higher level of influence over the state regarding issues that concern them and a higher level of freedom of speech, and I explain this result by linking majlis participation to the larger body of research on the impact of civil society. Citizens that engage in civil society are more likely to express their ideas, trust, accept and collaborate with one another (Krause, 2008). This participation essentially aids the feeling of empowerment, influence, and free speech. Majaalis are a space of civil society in which 80% of Qataris are engaged. In this civil society setting “individuals attempt to empower themselves through identifying notions that will lead to their personal and societal development, happiness and satisfaction” (Krause, 2008, 9). Social and personal development occurs in the majlis through skill building activities. Our survey results show that 83% shared their opinion with the group, 73% helped the group make a decision, 70% gathered or shared information on a topic important to them, 64% received encouragement or encouraged someone to take action on something important, 63% of participants have given a speech or presentation, 40% planned a meeting, and 25% contacted a person or institution to voice a concern. Some of the majlis activities mentioned above fall exactly into Brady, Verba and Schlozman's (1995) guidelines of what constitutes engaging in civic skills. I hypothesize that these activities within the majlis then aid in personal empowerment in the public sphere, such as feelings of political efficacy or freedom of speech. This specific hypothesis is important because the majlis space itself has been overlooked as a space of civil society due to its semi-public, semi-private nature. There is reason to believe that there are civil society activities occurring within the majlis; therefore it is important to examine the effects of the space that the majority of Qatari citizens participate in and its relationship to their feeling of influence and free speech. The survey results show that different types of majaalis are correlated with an individual's feelings of influence and free speech differently, and I look into this result with further research and interviews to help clarify this relationship. Also, my additional research helps me determine causality, in other words, whether the majlis actually causes empowerment among people. To conclude, the survey results show, with statistical significance, that majlis members, as opposed to non-majlis members, feel more influence over the state and more freedom of speech concerning issues important to them. I am currently conducting additional research on scholarly work related to civil society and empowerment, along with interviews with regular majlis participants, which will help me determine whether the relationship between majlis participants and the sense of influence and freedom of speech is a matter of correlation or causation. My presentation will discuss both survey results and results from my additional research. A note on the methodology of the survey: The Social And Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI) at Qatar University, an established surveying institution, carried out the phone survey from December 25th 2014 until January 15th 2015. Respondents were chosen via random sampling through computer automated random mobile numbers provided to SESRI by a major telecommunications company in Qatar. A computer was used to automatically dial the mobile numbers of respondents with no chance of interviewer dial error. Respondents that didn't respond the first time were called multiple times throughout different times of the day over the survey period. All respondents were Qatari and above 18 years old, and a total of 302 females and 347 males were surveyed. The response rate is 34.4%, which is relatively high, compared to response rates of phone surveys in the U.S. (Pew Research Center). Interviewers asked the questions in Arabic and recorded the results through entering a number that was coded to a specific answer in the computer making the process quicker and more accurate in order to decrease the likeliness of interviewer error. The study sponsor, QNRF, did not play any role in editing, or censoring any of the survey questions or results. The survey results are within a +/ − 4% sampling error, meaning that the results are within an 8% range of representing the population as a whole. In my work, I report the survey results are reported with a 95% confidence level, meaning that I am 95% sure my results reflect the population as a whole within the range of sampling error.
References
Brady, Henry E., Sidney Verba, and Kay Lehman Schlozman. 1995. “Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation.” The American Political Science Review 89 (2): 271–94.
Krause, Wanda. 2008. “Women in Civil Society: Key Issues in the Middle East.” In Women in Civil Society: The State, Islamism, and Networks in the UAE, 1–26. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Pew Research Center. “Assessing the Representativeness of Public Opinion Surveys.” May 15, 2012. Accessed November 3, 2015.
Qatari Women Engagement and Empowerment: Qatar National Research Fund, UREP 15-035-5-013. March 29, 2014 – September 29, 2015.
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The Role of Women Artists in Qatar and the Representation of their Work in Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art
المؤلفون: Lina Nabih RamadanLittle research has been done to trace back and document the role of women artists from the Arabian Gulf countries in the local and international art scene. This could be justified due to the fact that women in the recent past were not accepted in public spheres. However, even after the emergence of modernism in most of the Gulf countries, the cultural sector remains somehow gendered where women artists have to self-censor their ideas and work in order to be accepted in the art scene. As a result, their work remain absent or sometimes represented in a way that succumbs to institutional and curatorial decisions. This takes away so much creativity of their work and also the opportunity of engaging the public around topics that reflect women's perspective on culture and heritage. There are many examples about work done by women artists from this region that ended up either derived from its original messages when curate or even shut down entirely when tried to reimagine the idea of women and traditions in the Gulf. This leads many women artists such as Shirin Neshat and Sophia Al Maria for example to turn their work to western art institutions where their work is sold and appreciated by wider audience. It's important to document the complexities, uniqueness and differences of the backgrounds of these women artists and their work in a time where the Gulf countries such as Qatar and Dubai for example, are investing so much in their cultural sectors as part of building their national vision. The history and current work by women artists from this region should not be lost within the process of development and that's what the art scene in Qatar is challenging. The rapid investment of Qatar on arts and culture has put the country under international spotlight especially when a Muslim conservative country hands its heritage sector to be overseen by a female figure, her highness Sheikha Al Mayassa, the sister of the current Emir and the daughter of the country's role model for women, Sheikha Mozah Almissned. Purchasing one of the most expensive paintings in the world entitled When will you Marry? by Paul Gauguin, and dedicating recent art spaces to solo exhibitions by women artists from the region, tells us so much about Al Mayassa's future vision in regards of the empowerment of women artists in Qatar. Yet, multiple communities in Qatar are resistant to such change, fearing that such art impose a threat that would demolish the Arab and Muslim identity from their culture. In my research, I will investigate the reason behind this gender gap, the lack of public discussions and studies on audience reception, and finally highlight what women's art in this region wants to communicate and offer to its multiple communities. As a case study, my paper will document and investigate the role of women artists as socio-political activists in the Arab and Islamic world, particularly in Qatar, and the representation of their work exhibited at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art.
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Tweets About Qatar Around the World – Who's Setting the Agenda?
المؤلفون: Shahan Ali Memon, Rohith Krishnan Pillai, Ingmar Weber, Yelena Mejova and Susan DunAfter winning the bid for the FIFA World Cup 2022, Qatar albeit a small country in both size and population, has spurred significant international interest not just in the professional media but also on social media. Many international press agencies have closely monitored Qatar, typically reporting many points of contention. In the media in countries like the US and the UK, the discussion, which tends to focus on the preparation for the 2022 World Cup, is generally led by a few major players including the Guardian, and the Washington Post. Most of the recent coverage related to Qatar in public news channels and media portrays Qatar in a negative light, especially focusing on issues regarding migrant workers and allegations regarding improprieties in the FIFA bid. This recent trend in “Qatar bashing” in the media is damaging to the image of Qatar internationally. However, looking beyond professional news coverage, these topics appear to have also entered public discussions through social media such as Twitter. Topics such as migrant workers' deaths, and recent controversies in the World Cup bid are being discussed by the general public around the world in such social media platforms.
However, the extent to which these and other topics about Qatar are discussed is unknown. Is the conversation on Twitter dominated by a few sources such as in the traditional media? Or is there more diversity between residents of different countries on social media? To help answer this question we used Twitter to analyze public opinion about Qatar. Twitter has been used on many occasions to garner insight into public opinion. Predictions of the winner in the recent UK elections and the 2012 US primaries provide two such examples. Twitter has the advantage of being a medium for many people to freely voice their opinion on very serious, political and/or controversial issues that matter to them. This may make Twitter a relatively better social media platform to analyze the public sentiment in comparison to Facebook or Instagram, which tend to have more multifaceted and personal content.
To evaluate the content of the discussion about Qatar across the world, we collected tweets along with their user-data in 35 widely spoken languages retrieved via the Twitter Streaming API to examine the topical content of tweets about Qatar. We collected a corpus of 1.1 million raw tweets across 2 months (May to July 2015) and parsed them. Because of our interest in similarities and differences in tweets in difference locales, we then filtered them to discard tweets without user-defined locations. The remaining 0.45 million tweets were then linked to user-defined locations and clustered by country. These tweets were then broken down into uni-grams and bi-grams, based on user-count, to form tag clouds to visually compare and contrast the topics about Qatar between countries. Furthermore, in our study we also incorporated cited domain names pertaining to different URLs in the tweets, to provide insights about the key domains and figures that may have formed or influenced that perception.
In our analysis, we found that largely similar topics such as “migrant workers”, “deaths” and “FIFA” are discussed around the world regarding Qatar, which is a surprising given linguistic and cultural differences. However, we did see some national differences.
The key insight of the data analyzed is how different public sentiment in different countries stack up against each other regarding issues relating to Qatar. For example, the tag clouds indicate that in Nepal, the leading sentiment on the issue of migrant workers is relatively grim since its tag cloud features uni-grams like “funerals”. On the other hand, the tag cloud for France does not show much attention to the migrant workers. Interestingly, by extracting top 10 domains per each country, we found that same players, especially the Guardian, the Washington Post and the BBC are key sources of information even in non-English speaking countries such as Germany. That is, few professional media sources dominate the international conversation on Twitter. With this new methodology we have identified, for the first time to our knowledge, that a relatively small number of news sources drive the conversation about Qatar around the world. Though our study revolves around Qatar specifically, we believe this methodology can be used to track “nation branding” via social media, providing key insights to stake holders about how their nation is discussed across the world.
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The Social Identity of Children Born to Qatari Mothers and Non-Qatari Fathers in the State of Qatar
المؤلفون: Suad Ahmed MuwanguaAbstract
Superficial characteristics like physical features, race, origin and nationality have proven in the past to escalate to violent conflicts, reasons very from relativeness to belonging. Although the issue of those born to Qatari mothers is unlikely to escalate to a conflict anytime soon, it is still a rising heath concern, especially in terms of the conflicting social identity, which have proven to cause anxiety to many individuals. Unifying the state of Qatar, and identifying what makes a Qatari is vital to achieve the states visions.
Objectives
Identify the source of the identity crisis, define and understand children born to Qatari mothers to properly integrate them in society in order resolve the identity issue, and unify Qatar as a whole by universally defining what makes a Qatari? is it merely biased on nationality?
Literature Review
It its important to not that not a lot of literature directly discusses the research topic, and it was not the researches intent to attack the law system in the state of Qatar, yet, understand and carefully study the causes and effects surrounding the identity of children born to Qatari mothers.
Qatar State law decree no. (21) of 1989 Regarding the Regulation of Marriage to foreigners. This law regulates rights to be exercised by those born to Qatari mothers without exceptions. This was used to examine the actual law, and what is exercised in reality.
Anderson, B. defines and identifies the origin and formation of nationality. Explaining that humans set boundaries for themselves that are merle imagined to satisfy a belonging deficiency found within ones self. Although Mr. Anderson simplifies the problem, the question asked for the sake of this research is: can the issue be easily removed? Can society simply eliminate the self-proclaimed boundaries the same way they created them?
All three Halisi, Kasiser, and Ndegwa, identified citizen as “identification with a specific state as a form of personal identity” and followed by providing 2 definitions of citizenship, one liberal and the other civic republican. In both definitions one's obligations to the state makes them a part of the community. Thus those born to Qatari mothers living within the state are unquestionably part of society, yet, Is the social identity soullessly a factor of the state and not society?
Al-khour, A. explains that the national identity within the GCC has featured prominently since independence and became an integral part of the psyche of the citizens, thus a powerful sense of identity. He however follows explaining the paradoxical concepts that contribute to identity in the GCC. homogeneity of culture and social that defines and distinguished the GCC from other societies. This contributes to why children born to Qatari mothers are neglected in society, and considered aliens from dominant group.
Tjfel, emphasizes that social identity is extracted from the surrounding environment. Stating “any society which contains power, status, prestige and social group differentials places each of us in a number of social categories which becomes an integral part of our self-definition”, in this case; what is and what should be the identity of those born to Qatari mothers?
Zahra Barbar, provides a new dimension to reasons behind neglecting those born to Qatari mothers which focuses on the economic burden the state may face as a result of the extremely high welfare benefits and privileges provided to current citizens.
Turner and Sater however argue Zahra Barbar point, claiming that denial is merely based on reforms and perestroika burden.
Mr. Al-Shawi's literature highlights the heavy political influence tribes have on the state, thus if the state is reluctant to fully integrate this portion of society, it is highly dependent on pleasing tribes. This complies with the act of giving those born to Qatari mothers some rights within the state however denying them other rights.
Methodology
The methodology and data collection for this research paper were both qualitative and quantitative, with the goal of achieving a more reliable conclusions. Primary sources; One-on-one interviews, Survey semi-structured Secondary sources; books and journal articles, News Paper articles
Research and Discussion
Qatar's Law
The constitution lacks laws directly regulating rights of children born to Qatari mothers. This is a direct result of the constitution being relatively new; therefore, laws tend to result in complications and unintended prejudice. Only a hand full of laws clarify rights given to those born to Qatar mothers. Exhibit (A) Human Resources are required by law to prioritizes those born to Qatari mothers post Qatari's. Exhibit (B) Prioritization by law when acquiring Qatari nationality, yet subjected to 4 requirement (1) Must be regular residents in Qatar for over 25 years (2) must entail lawful means of income (3) Good reputation, and no convictions impugning their honor or integrity (4) Good knowledge of the Arabic language. However, even with prioritizing those born to Qatari mothers, the nationality is only given to 50 applicants per year. Additionally, individuals are still subjected to a form of social discrimination even after acquiring the citizenship this is a direct result of the social construction of the state “originals” and “naturalized”.
Finally, the law “Regulating Marriage to Foreigners” is the only law that gives right and not prioritization. It includes; right to residency if the mother lives in the state, granting minor children travelling documents, and equality to Qataris in 3 categories (A) Education (B) Healthcare and (C) Employment. Moreover, even though each right is accompanied with a condition which emphases on identity, these rights are only applicable if the marriage is endorsed by the minster of interior.
Qatari Society
(A) Society is unaware, indifferent and contributes to the emotional deterioration of those born to Qatari mothers for several reasons. 1- Assuming the father's identity is enough regardless of the place of birth and upbringing 2- Society doesn't resist integration on a daily bases, however, discriminates and refuse equality in terms of the law, and marriage. Reasons rage from their perceptions of Islam to economic burden (inconsistent treatment)
(B) The social construction of the state offers tribes a great political influence. This is because the states stability and security is highly dependent on tribesmen loyalty to the state. And while in peace the state instigates competition between tribes by providing privileges to some and not other because complete unity is not in it's best interest. This corresponds with giving those born to Qatari mothers some rights to maintain loyalty, while denying them the nationality.
Conclusion
Although the constitution lacks the appropriate laws to regulate rights of those born to Qatari mother, the issue lies in failure to implement available laws in addition to societies inconstancy in treatment and xenophobia, which manifested to a form of social identity crisis that level depends on the individual's integration into society.
In order to eliminate the social identity crisis, it is vital to follow some policy recommendation that follow the path of full naturalization, in addition to exempting this portion of society from the 50 applicant per one calendar year law.
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تطور الأنماط التركيبية في اللغة العربية (دراسة إحصائية تحليلية حاسوبية)
المؤلفون: Mona Naifeتتناول هذه الورقة البحثية موضوع “ تطور الأنماط التركيبية في اللغة العربية (دراسة إحصائية تحليلية حاسوبية)، إذ يهدف البحث إلى إنشاء مدونة لغوية تحصر (نسبيًا) الأنماط التركيبية في اللغة العربية، حصرًا تامًا على جهة الاستقرار والشمول، ذلك باعتماد عينات لغوية منتقاة من فترات تاريخية مختلفة (قديمًا وحديثًا)، وسيتم اعتماد الفترة ابتداءً من ق 200 قبل الهجرة إلى القرن الرابع عشر مقياسًا زمنيًا لأجناس النصوص الممتدة في هذه الحقبة الزمنية؛ وذلك بهدف تغطية الفترات الزمنية التي مرت بها اللغة العربية، ثم تأتي خطوة المقارنة والتحليل بدراسة مقارِنة للتحولات التي طرأت على طيف هذه الأنماط التركيبية خلال تلك الحقب الزمنية المختلفة. ويأتي الانتقال إلى إعداد المعالجة الإحصائية لهذه الأنماط، وذلك بإعدادها على نحو يكون صالحًا للمعالجة الآلية.الحاسوبية؛ بترميز كل نمط ترميزًا صوريًا مستقلًا
وانطلاقًا مما سبق؛ فإننا سنعتمد لتحقيق أهداف البحث منهجًا رئيسًا وهو المنهج التاريخي بالاستعانة بآليات المناهج الأخرى متعددة كآليات المنهج الإحصائي، والمنهج التحليلي. وهي مناهج تتناسب وطبيعة الأهداف التي يهدف إليها هذا المشروع. أما المنهج الوصفي فلتتبع الخصائص المميزة لكل فترة من الفترات الزمنية المختلفة المستهدفة في هذا البحث. ثم المنهج الإحصائي الذي هو استقراء الأنماط النحوية لكل فترة زمنية، وإحصائها.. أما المنهج التحليلي؛ فهو قراءة تحليلية في خصائص هذه الأنماط، ومستوى درجة ترددها، وإيقاع استعمالها في كل فترة من الفترات الزمنية المختلفة.. والغاية المرجوة من المزاوجة بين هذه المناهج، هي الوصول إلى خلاصات دقيقة؛ لتعطي صورةً مفصلة عن تطور الأنماط التركيية في اللغة العربية، وعن الإيقاع العام الذي تحكمه التحولات الأساسية التي شهدها هذا التطور خلال الفترات الزمنية المختلفة.
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