BRIDE PRIDE OR BRIDE PRICE? INTERGENERATIONAL APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING EMIRATI WOMEN’S PERSPECTIVE ON DOWRY

As Emirati women are showing more in physical and virtual public spaces, shining as powerful leaders in workplaces and as mothers who do it all inside and outside the house, this study aims at understating how much these women’s perspectives have changed regarding the payment of dowry, or Mahr, which is an amount of money the Emirati woman receives in marriage, in light of the recent debates on the media about the negative connotation of being paid by her husband to marry him. Through a qualitative approach, this study concludes that as modernized as they have become, there are still certain things in marriage that Emirati women perceive traditional and perpetuating. Dowry is found to be an instrumental and essential tool used for wedding preparation. The interviewed women in this study don’t think of dowry as their price in marriage, but rather the price that has to be paid to have a decent wedding in an extravagant world.