The Construction of Gendered Subjectivities in Discourses of Empowerment

This paper interrogates the discursive construction of gendered subjectivities in state-sponsored women's empowerment programs in the United Arab Emirates. Analyzing empowerment discourses from Emirati rulers and their kin, this paper adopts a feminist-oriented Foucauldian approach to understand the current formation of women’s empowerment. It examines contemporary forms of gendered subjectivities and the mobilization of knowledges and practices that are constitutive of them. This paper starts from the perspective that state-sponsored women’s empowerment is a gendered technology of (self)government that make it possible to form and control behavior in view of certain goals. It explores the discursive centralization of socio-political contexts where Emirati women are called to assume a decidedly self-regulated role in the development of a modern State. In the UAE, women’s empowerment discourse can be situated within the broader program of, on one hand, continued efforts of nation-building and gender-framing of women’s rights, and on the other hand, the State’s nuanced involvement with intergovernmental initiatives to advance the status of women a global scale. It is at this juncture where Emirati women are invoked as subjects to be empowered: from her role and relationship to the State and participation in a modern society, to her bodily practices that assist in the assertion of national identity and cultural preservation.