[11] On 5 March 2020, a British court ruled that on the balance of probabilities, Sheikh Mohammed, the absolute ruler of Dubai and the prime minister of the UAE, had abducted two of his daughters, Shamsa and Latifa, and had threatened his former wife, the Jordanian princess Haya bint Hussein.
[14] On 16 February 2021, BBC's Panorama broadcast a documentary featuring Sheikha Latifa's video messages that she made secretly under enforced detention in Dubai on the orders of Sheikh Mohammed.
[20] In its 2015 assessment, The CEDAW Committee made many recommendations to the UAE on initiatives needed to safeguard women's equality.
[22] Therefore, the UAE took action in response by including the removal of laws that required women to "obey" their husbands, the explicit affirmation of a man's legal right to discipline his wife and children, and the punishment of consensual extramarital sex.
[23] The UAE, according to a 2012 report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has the second lowest percentage of local women working in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
[29] At the nine-year-old Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, women constitute 43% of its investors while the city's businesswomen's association boasts 14,000 members.
[33][34] Women's rights in the UAE came under heightened scrutiny after the emergence of videos of Sheikha Latifa, daughter of Dubai ruler Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, claiming she feared for her life as she was held hostage by her father since she tried to flee in 2018.
[27] The World Economic Forum also ranked the UAE in 2020 second-best in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region for gender equality.
[42] In the World Economic Forum's annual Global Gender Gap Report, the UAE ranked 72 out of 153 countries in 2021, rising from 120 in 2020.
[43][44] The Human Rights Watch (HRW) submitted on February 26, 2021, to the United Nations committee a report on the UAE's compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The report sheds light on the range of abuses against migrant domestic workers by UAE employers and recruiting agents.
This includes the confiscation of passports, trafficking, physical abuse, failure to pay full wages, forcing workers to labor for long hours without time off, and the denial of proper living conditions and access to healthcare services.
[52] Article 72 of the Law on Personal Status allows judges to determine if it is permissible for a married woman to leave the house and to work.
Also, a line in Article 56.1 of the Law on Personal Status stating that a husband has the right to courteous obedience from his wife was removed in 2019.
[62][63] The UAE ranked first in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in the economic participation of women in the World Bank's 2021 'Women, Business and the Law' report.
[64] The country also announced on March 15, 2021, a list of companies that must have at least one female board member, but by May 2021, only four of the 23 people holding these roles at firms on the UAE's two major stock exchanges were women.
[65] But since the decision came to effect in early April, Emaar Properties PJSC, Du, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company for Distribution, and Dana Gas named women to their boards.
Sharia courts may also hear appeals of certain criminal cases including rape, robbery, driving under the influence of alcohol and related crimes.
[115] In Sep. 2013, Lana Nusseibeh was appointed as the UAE's first female Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and she was elected in 2017 as President of the UN Women Executive Board.
[119] In the UAE, a marriage union between a Muslim woman and non-Muslim man is punishable by law, since it is considered a form of "fornication".
[120] In two cases, women who reported being raped were sentenced to prison for "engaging in extramarital relations", as their allegations were considered unfounded by authorities.
[121] In 2010, a Muslim woman in Abu Dhabi recanted her allegations of being gang-raped by 6 men, claiming that the police threatened her with corporal punishment for premarital sex.
[122] In 2013, a Norwegian woman, Marte Dalelv, received a prison sentence of sixteen months in Dubai for perjury, consensual extramarital sex, and alcohol consumption, after she reported her boss to the police for an alleged rape; she was later fully pardoned and allowed to leave the country.
[124] She also stated that "the message to women is clear: victims will be punished for speaking out and seeking justice, but sexual assault itself will not be properly investigated".
[120] In Dubai, a woman who engages in consensual extramarital relations and presses false allegations of rape can be sentenced to over a year of time in prison.
[120] The Emirates Center for Human Rights states that "Until laws are reformed, victims of sexual violence in the UAE will continue to suffer" referring to a case in July 2013 in which a 24-year-old Norwegian woman reported an alleged rape to the police and received a prison sentence for "perjury, consensual extramarital sex and alcohol consumption" after she admitted lying about the rape.
[120][128][129] The 2007 report on the progress of MDGs in the UAE states, "the proportion of females in higher education has risen remarkably at a rate that has not been achieved in any other country in the world.
"[130] Upon completion of high school, 95% of Emirati women continue on to higher education and constitute 75% of the student population at the Al Ain national university.
It was celebrated for the first time in 2015 upon the initiative of Fatima Bint Mubarak and it marks the anniversary of the creation of the UAE's General Women's Union.
[145] The award honors 12 women every cycle in the business and professional categories as well as the leadership, strategic and financial planning, career achievements, community contributions, innovation criteria.