State Discourses on Women’s Empowerment in Qatar: The “Ideal Qatari Woman” as a Neoliberal Feminist Subject

Abstract This article analyzes contemporary state discourse on women’s empowerment in Qatar as embodied in state documents, government-run public relations campaigns, and the media output of state-run or state-sanctioned institutions. Through the lens of critical discourse analysis, the article demonstrates how the Qatari state’s political rhetoric conflates women’s professional advancement with national progress and constructs the “ideal Qatari woman” as a neoliberal feminist subject. With particular attention to the rhetoric found in the state-run magazine Q Life, the article argues that the Qatari state is promoting a model of women’s empowerment that merges transnational paradigms of neoliberal feminism with nationalist ideals of loyalty and patriotism and presents the ideal “Qatari woman” as a neoliberal feminist subject who contributes to her state’s national development through her own professional development and fulfillment.