Author(s)

A. Rhodes & N. Edge

Abstract

Encouraging career exploration and developing a path to meaningful graduate employment in an all-women Muslim environment in the face of a range of cultural issues provides challenges for a university in such an environment. This paper reports on experiences from Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. In a bold social move, Zayed University was established by the United Arab Emirates government in 1998 as a nationally funded university to meet tertiary education needs solely for national Emirati ladies. Academic degree programs at Zayed University are attempting to prepare these Muslim women for their personal and professional lives in the twenty-first century, and to help shape the future of their country. However, traditional western career development practices need to be tailored to suit the particular cultural needs in this special environment. Keywords: careers, employment, women, muslim, tertiary education. 1 Introduction Zayed University is located in the United Arab Emirates and is a 3000 strong Emirati national all-women student institution. The university, founded only in 1998, was a vision of the founding president of the UAE, Sheik Zayed, to provide a special environment for the education of national women as an important step in educating the UAE nation. Typically, a student at Zayed University is first a generation university family member with women representing seventy five percent of all Emirati nationals in tertiary education institutions. The university is staffed with expatriate faculty from the US, UK, Australia, South Africa and several other countries. The purpose of this paper is to outline the academic career curricula established at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates to foster career

Keywords

careers, employment, women, muslim, tertiary education.