Page 260 - UAE Truncal States

Social Aspects of Traditional Economy

do so today in the modern fish markets of the UAE. Otherwise
women did not normally participate very much in trade. But, as
mentioned earlier, some women invested their own money in buying
cloth, perfumes, combs or any other wares which they could sell to
the women of related and neighbouring households. The poorer
among them might sell wherever they could or spread their wares of
home-made face masks (burqa ), fish-hooks, incense burners and
other small items on a mat by the sue/.
Some women who inherited money, or who after a divorce retained
large sums of money from the bride-price, would buy a shop but take
no active part in running it. In rare cases a woman did herself engage
in business ventures, own and fit out pearling boats, or lend money,
or trade in pearls and general imports. She would use a trusted slave
or employ a man to function as her agent in all contacts with male
counterparts in the business, but the final decision would be hers,
and if need be important negotiations would be carried on from
behind a door or through a curtain. While the economy in the oil
exporting shaikhdoms expanded rapidly, many more female mem­
bers of ruling and merchant families alike engaged in profitable
business, particularly through letting multi-storey buildings.
The fact that women in the shaikhdoms of the Gulf lead a life
secluded from public gatherings and hidden from the eyes of
strangers does not mean that their role within the family is any less
important for the economic prosperity of the household and the
entire community than the role of their sisters who live in a different
environment.

6 Conclusion: uniformity of life-style due to
economic limitations
Before the export of oil from Abu Dhabi began, even the most
industrious of the people in the Trucial States could not dramatically
increase their wealth or improve upon the overall economic situation
in these shaikhdoms. Outside influences such as regional political
developments or the opening of new trade routes only brought about
minor changes for the community as a whole. Nothing could ever
totally transform the way of life as much as the export of oil did later.
Whether pearls were the fashion in Europe, whether entrepot trade
with neighbouring countries shifted to the Trucial States, whether
there were a few years of good rains or whether the locust swarms

235