An exploration into the religious and symbolic meanings of gendered spaces in an Arab gulf home

Abstract

Houses are rich symbols representative of culture, self and identity (Marcus 1995). The current research provides a comparative perspective on Arab-Islamic (Qatari) and Western values as encoded in the home and use of spaces within it. Our ethnographic study involved observation and in-depth interviews with twenty four middleclass home-owning Qatari families living in Doha. We found gendered areas as well as visual and non-visual domains of privacy. Furthermore, we found a parallel between the home and the woman's body as these both relate to the notions of sanctity, purity, and reserve. Both also seem to embody and mediate global and local cultural controversies Qataris are subject to as a result of the increased influence of Western consumption patterns.