As in many other nations and locales throughout the Arab world, the development aspirations and discourses that underscore such projects stand in delicate tension with coinciding Islamic reformist discourses βeven though both are inherently modernizing and moralizing.
The Soqotra Archipelago, situated roughly between the peninsulas, is no exception. Soqotra was then administered as a restricted military zone until , when it became part of the newly unified Republic of Yemen The socialist state was credited for having introduced a range of social welfare programs βmost importantly, state education and food subsidiesβ to the transhumant pastoralists and coastal fishermen who until recently depended largely on a combination of animal husbandry, fishing, and date cultivation.
Not only had Soqotra just been made more easily accessible after a prolonged period of enforced isolation under socialist rule, but also its inhabitants were considered underdeveloped and uneducated βand thus particularly in need of religious instruction and guidance.
A more vigilant separation of the sexes was generally encouraged. Several of the mainland Yemenis and a few of the Soqotrans including one woman were sent abroad for further training; other Soqotran employees learned English on the job, which has since served them well in tourism or in other ventures. Conspicuous consumption is, well, more conspicuous today than it was when I lived in Soqotra from to One of the most striking effects of tourism in Soqotra, however, is its slow, but inevitable widening of a gap in life experiences between young adult men and women, especially in the rural areas.
More commonly, Soqotran men work with tourists, while Soqotran women work behind the scenes. For example, in the protected area in which I lived, rural women made trinkets and collected gum resins to sell to visiting tourists; however, the children would run them over to the car park or campground, preventing any direct contact between the tourists and their mothers. In what follows I discuss several examples of how these rural Soqotran women have been targeted by pietist and development discourses, respectively, in order to examine in further detail the types of gender ed transformations occurring on the island.
