The Role of Parents in the Higher Education and Career Choices of Women of Arab Descent: A Comparative Study of Australia and the UAE

Abstract

This research explored the higher education and career decision-making experiences of 38 women of Arab background in two contexts: Australia and the UAE, in light of their parental influences and socio-cultural contexts. The research sought to understand the role of parents in their daughters’ higher education and career choices, and the relationship between parental roles and the socio-culturally constructed perceptions of Arab women’s roles. The research further examined whether the distinct socio-cultural context of each sample set of Arab women had an effect on their higher education and career decisionmaking processes, perceptions and aspirations. The complex range of familial, cultural and contextual influences on Arab women’s higher education and career choices were investigated using a constructivist grounded theory methodology. This methodology assumes an interpretivist stance whereby researchers co-construct knowledge with participants, taking into account their own positionalities, perspectives and interactions. It also enables the examination of processes within their wider socio-cultural contexts, recognising that perspectives and meaning-making are historically, spatially and socially bound. The research shows that the higher education and career decision-making of Arab women in this study are joint, interactive processes that occur under the control and direction of parents. Parental roles, however, are complex and derive from an array of traditional and contemporary perceptions of women’s roles within which an interplay of gender, culture and religion is evident. Parents hold high expectations for their daughters’ higher education, while simultaneously aspiring for them to pursue traditional pathways of marriage. Contrasting overarching themes related to women’s educational and occupational aspirations emerged from each sample set. In the UAE, women’s aspirations were seemingly more individualistic, reflecting their relatively privileged social status and rapidly evolving and modernising culture. In Australia, women were equally aspirational yet expressed collectivist goals that would benefit themselves as well as their minority communities. The study provides new insights into the familial and socio-cultural factors that enable or constrain Arab women’s higher education and career choices, and contributes to a growing body of literature on Arab youth’s higher education and career decision-making. It has endeavoured to build a grounded theory of Arab women’s higher education and career decision-making, highlighting the significance of parental involvement in guiding these women towards higher education and careers that fall within parameters of cultural conformity. The theory additionally emphasises the importance of acquiring valued forms of higher education in order for these women and their families to attain perceived respectable and honourable status in society.