It is understood that official anger over the mission to America has led other foreign governments to halt their own plans for similar missions - missions that aimed for nothing more controversial than to build links between Gulf businesswomen and their female counterparts in the West. A straw-poll of Gulf and foreign businesswomen identifies several common obstacles to the advancement of Arabian women at work. But that is not to suggest that the typical female Western executive feels that her own business life is a bowl of cherries. The most decisive factor is whether a woman's family supports and encourages her to work. There is no shortage of anecdotal evidence about fathers who glow with pride when their daughters graduate from high school or college, but who see these hard-won qualifications only as status symbols, and don't want to see them put to use in the work place.
Marriage can be the next obstacle.
Even the casual visitor to offices and banks in Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait and the UAE will notice a marked increase in young working national women, a shift that has taken place in less than a decade. But many women drop out, either after marriage or once their first child is born. Many Gulf women are in close contact with their extended family and, in a society that has an abundance of domestic help, it is rare for women to have childcare worries. This frees them from one of the major obstacles that many Western career women face. One unmarried Emirati career woman in her late twenties has a high-profile job in advertising, having graduated in business studies from Dubai Women's College.