Al Senani, who works for Abu Dhabi TV, is a graduate of Zayed University (ZU). The UAE-based school, with its college of communication and media sciences, has spent the past eight years quietly preparing Emirati women to enter the workforce in a country where many still look down on the idea of daughters and wives working with strange men.
“In 2000, the message we were given was that we were making a change for the next generation, that children would grow up and see nothing strange about having a mother who worked,” says Phillip Cass, assistant dean of the College of Communication and Media Sciences at ZU.
Founded in 1998 by the UAE government, the university’s two campuses in Dubai and Abu Dhabi have a combined enrollment of 3,200. ZU enrolls only Emirati women, who have up to six years to attain a tuition-free bachelor’s degree.
“I think this place is an extension of Sheikh Zayed’s original vision. He said, ‘Educate a woman, educate a country,’ ” Cass adds. One year before the school was founded, Sheikh Zayed authored a pamphlet, “Women in the UAE,” advocating for gender integration in the UAE workforce.
According to the BBC, women in the UAE make up 15 percent of the native workforce but account for 65 percent of the overall university population. ZU operates in anticipation of ever-greater numbers of females working in the UAE broadcasting industry.
“We’re trying to prepare them for the world of work, just as we would at any other university,” says associate journalism professor Edward Freedman, who came to ZU after having spent 25 years at CBS and ABC.
The ZU communications program currently offers concentrations of study in film and broadcast media; magazine and multi-media journalism; and public relations and advertising, where the majority of graduates choose to find work.
ZU emphasizes hands-on work because the prohibiting factors that prevent many women from going to work also prevent them from getting experience in outside internships.
“If [the family has] trouble with them working with men, they’ll also have trouble with them going to an internship and working with men,” says ZU associate professor Alma Kadragic.
These projects take the form of regular, student-produced television and radio broadcasts and a monthly print magazine.
The show, ZU TV, is a biweekly news program that the students write, shoot and edit themselves, using Sony DV-170 digital video cameras and Holo Cut Pro editing software.
“Everything we do in this area is hands-on,” Freedman says, adding that the show gives the women a chance to apply the skills they learned in the school’s graphics courses. While the work is not as intense as an internship at a professional television studio, the show does give the students some practical experience.
“The students are trained to become people who know how to report and write a story,” Cass says, adding that ZU gladly sets up internships for students who wish it.
Al Senani was one of the students who chose to pursue an internship, working with the Emirates Media camera unit for six months. It led her into her present career.
ZU students have also worked with local television in creating original content. Dubai TV recently began airing episodes of Freej, the first 3-D computer-generated cartoon series produced in the Middle East. Student volunteers from ZU worked as researchers for the cartoon, which follows four middle-aged Emirati women dealing with the rapid changes taking place in the UAE.
The magazine, the ZU Mirror, is a full-color, 36-page monthly covering university news. Students write, take photographs, design the layouts and even sell advertising to support the production costs of the monthly 1,500-issue print run.
“I try to get them to do as much as possible in a professional manner so it will be easier for them when they go to work,” Kadragic says. “This is an actual project, just as ZU TV is an actual project, something they can hold in their hands.”
According to Cass, 75 percent of graduates who look for employment find jobs, but, “you do get parents who are terrified that their children will be seen on camera. You’re going to get students who graduate, go home, get married, have babies and never work.”
Mahra Abdullah Al Yaqooby graduated in the spring and is now a television presenter for the Abu Dhabi Sports Channel. At 8 pm, Al Yaqooby presents the nightly news, something that “might have been a little more difficult 10 years ago,” she was quoted as saying by the ZU Mirror.
“But now it’s different because we have seen women who have enrolled and confirmed themselves in various fields,” Al Yaqooby says. Both Al Yaqooby and Al Senani emphasized that their families were highly supportive of their decisions.
“In a culture where girls still hide their face from everyone, to go on TV and show their face to the world is a major move,” Kadragic says.
ZU students also take part in trips abroad, which are often a first for students away from the family, Kadragic says. A trip to London last summer included a five-day training program with the BBC and a meeting with Frank Gardner, a BBC security consultant who in 2004 was shot six times by an Al Qaeda operative while on assignment in Saudi Arabia. His cameraman was killed.
Kadragic says the trip fit in perfectly with ZU’s efforts to broaden its students’ horizons, and wants to make it an annual event, with next summer’s trip lengthened to two weeks, enabling the students to shoot their own stories.