The Most Important Schemes of The Women Union:

1. Scheme Of Strategy Of Emarati Women Development.
2. Scheme Of Arab Family Between Universality And Locality.
3. Scheme Of Survey Of National Family Features.

Scheme Of Strategy Of Emarati Women Development.

The preparing period for the international women forum was distinguished by the increasing interest in women’s role in the national and regional levels. This interest appeared through holding many seminars and conferences, and shed light upon the women issue on the popular and official aspects besides the co-ordination between governments and private associations as personified through an Arab work plan reflecting the opinions towards the women issue. The coordination was headed during  the holding of the international conference under the sponsorship of the Arab league.

It is necessary to look at the Peking conference as a new step to gather efforts of governments and private feminine associations to motivate the international work programs through short extensive programs by the proposed establishments. UNIFEM initiated preparing for the conference by supporting official and popular activities all through various plans like that of training programs for the official and popular delegations and information sectors.

These programs contributed mainly to enhance the number of participants’ skills and provide them with required information and knowledge. UNIFEM also assumed to convert the international work plan into well structured strategies and national work plans aiming at developing woman. The United Nations development program in the UAE executed many projects and programs aiming to develop the Emarati women. This program was represented by the UN Growth Fund in the UAE as the plans set aiming to follow up the efforts that were exerted during the preparing stage of the Peking conference and active participation of the Emarati women in the conference to fulfill national work plans and strategies in order to develop them within a frame of Islamic principles and Arab heritage values.

 Among the many important documents issued in the Peking conference were the following:

• World work program, and
• Declaration of Peking. 

Also many important documents were issued in the Arab organizations such as the Arab regional report, and the national report of the fourth international women conference issued in the UAE. All these documents besides the studies which have been executed in the UAE particularly the study of participating women in the economic and social life which formed an important resource of the preparing national strategy. According to this, there was an agreement within the Women Union upon an inductive work plan with the following steps:

1- Forming a Specialized Technical Work Team:

The preparing policy targets the women progress and creates  priorities of women in each country taking into consideration the transformation of international work methods.

2- Preparing the Public Outlines of the National Approach:

it is the preparation of the national plan seeking the women development as it is necessary to evaluate the national reports and any previous studies about the situation of women in the UAE.

3- Holding Meetings and Seminars to Search into the Public Outlines of the National Policy:

 The policy will be the outcome of various studies and seminars related to women, in addition to meetings and specialized technical workshops.

4-Holding Public Conferences to Determine the Proposed Policy:

This is for the purpose of determining a directional national strategy for woman as it is necessary to hold public conferences making representatives of official institutions being interested in the women issue participate in them to appoint and define well this paper which comes throughout different stages.

 5- Performing Work Teams to Follow Up The Execution of  the Plan:

it is very vital here to gather the aspects of the woman issue in an active way within social and economic procedure of development.

Scheme Of Arab Family Between Universality And Locality:

 Tremendous changes appeared on the Arab societies that influenced the different social systems and communities. The family was the most widely affected as a result to different fundamentals that caused these changes, especially the external element that we are still suffering from. This element is called “globalization” that’s of economic technological and important dimensions. Besides, the internal influences were reflected through certain development plans and programs that aimed at improving the characteristics of the family in regard with the economic, social and health features.

 In addition to these elements, others have come out to cover all details of modernization, population growth and immigration. Instability then had positive influences and various problems of social issues. So it was required to define these effects, illustrate the issues and determine their problems.

According to the educational task and because of the insufficient Arab studies on the family level, the Women Union in the UAE and under the sponsorship of H.H. Sheikha Fatima Bint Mubarak emphasized the execution of this educational mission which aims at the following:

• Defining the most important features of the Arab family and the common elements that affect it either they are universal or local.
• Showing the influences of these changes on the family features either as for health, educational, demographic or economic aspects.
• Demonstrating the reflections of these changes on the family types, and their members’ relations internally and externally.
• Showing the effects of the economic changes especially the universal ones on the roles of the family members either for care, production or bearing.
• Showing the effect of these changes on the social raising process at present and in the future. It is known that the universal changes carry various cultural components which are different from our Arab culture, which plays a great role in performing the perceptive side of the child. So it is very serious to be responsible for the social development dealing in a good manner to take the positive things and refuse the negative ones to preserve the  identity of the family in general and the children in particular.
• Manifesting the influences of technology in the economic, agricultural, and industrial fields, and the effects of that in improving the economic and social level of the family.
• Observing the negatives that have resulted from these changes where the most important of them is the appearance of the social disturbance and family decadence that usually come out of the weak parental authority. This of course has changed the relationships between parents and children, and the relationships between the parents themselves.
• Showing the effects of these changes on the reproductive functions of the family as adopting western trends to belittle the size of the Arab family claiming that family size contradicts the process of growth and march of development.
• Clarifying the effects of the negative family phenomena that represented the increase of the marriage age and its consequent moral and educational reflections.
• Marrying foreign girls, which leads to many different effects on the social relationships as in the wideness of divorce cases and lacking of productive participation in the social economic sectors.

In fact the educational plan concentrates on the influence of world and local changes on the family features, traditions and habits that are derived from the Arab Islamic culture. The study also shows the roles of family, religious and social institutions against these changes.

These roles are exposed as follows:

• Necessity of rationalizing the family informative observation through the positive role of the mothers as choosing the positive informative data by designers of TV programs and serials.
• Necessity of supporting the family harmony through religious and educational assurance.
• Supporting the family roles in general, and the productive and re-productive roles of women in particular.

 This is in addition to the various roles which reply the following questions:

• The way of dealing with present troubles of the family.
• The way of preparing the family to face the world changes in general and containing technology in particular.
• The way of keeping on the features of families that are of Arab-origin identity.

We mention that the concentration on the family is according to the following facts:

• Family is a complex social unit that includes various dimensions of demographic, social, economical, cultural nature, and these dimensions are considered a reflection of the society with its all constituents.
• Family contains the human resources which are the main goals and means of development so it gets benefit from these outcomes, and continue these outcomes to achieve something significant.
• Family is the first social unit which is the most affected by the social changes.
• Harmony and stability of family are the important components that assure the continuity of supporting the roles and keeping on the nature of the family.

The National Survey Policy of National Family Features:

According to the intentions of the UAE government to achieve the highest level of lifestyle for individuals and families, and acknowledge providing the necessary data about family features as a base for tolerant arrangement, the Ministry of Planning coordinated with the General Women Union under the sponsorship of H.H. Sheikha Fatima Bint Mubarak to execute a national survey for the features of the UAE national family from the beginning of March 1998. The study had various purposes:

• Getting a quaint with the levels of the demographic, economic and social phenomena which are related to the national family life including the postponement of marriage age, divorce, widowing, re-production, parental obedience, handicapping, school phobia and infiltration, youth delinquency, inflation of daily expenses.
• Recognizing the fundamentals which affect these phenomena.
• Developing well organized databases about the features of nationals’ lifestyles and families as a source to study what has happened of changes in the level of the available results, and comparing them with the provided information through similar future surveys.
• Supporting the national ability to do the social economic and demographic survey and analysis.

 Survey Sample:

 The national survey example of family features is designed as a probable cluster on two stages: At the first stage, the initial educational units were chosen, five questionnaires were designed and their data would be collected through the field stage of survey, and these questionnaires were:

1-       Questionnaire of living and inhabitation circumstances of the family.

2-       Questionnaire of qualified lady.

3-       Questionnaire of marriage age postponement.

4-       Questionnaire of school infiltration.

5-       Questionnaire of youth delinquency.

The questionnaire of skillful lady is considered the backbone of the survey and would be collected from what married ladies under the age of 50 years had of information including the following:

·        The background of the search.

·        Marriage.

·        Re-production and Infant mortality.

·        Separation between childbirths.

·        Background of marriage.

·        Parental obedience.

·        Divorce.

·        Financial income and outcome.

·        Coordination with the official departments.

 The Ministry of Planning coordinated during the stage of designing the survey questionnaires its efforts with different official departments such as the Women Union, the UAE University, the UAE Center of Strategic Studies, the Ministry of Health, the Department of Planning in Abu Dhabi and the Marriage Fund to fulfill special needs in order to increase the benefits of this survey.