If you are pregnant and working, you need to think about what maternity leave you can expect from your employer. Your maternity leave depends on if you work in the private sector, DIFC or for the Dubai Government.

If you are working in the private sector, the UAE Labour Law Article 30 says, “a working woman is entitled to 45 days maternity leave with full pay including both pre and post natal periods, provided that she has completed not less than one year of continuous service with her employer. A female worker who has not completed the aforesaid period of service shall be entitled to maternity leave with half pay.”

Further, the Article 31 specifies two nursing breaks of half an hour each and everyday, without any reduction of pay. Under certain conditions you can take up to 100 days (consecutive or non-consecutive) leave without pay after your maternity leave has finished, this is if you are breastfeeding and have a medical certificate to say you are sick.

If you are working in Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) the paid maternity leave is 45 days with full pay if you been in service for 1 year and 45 days with half pay if you been in service for less than a year. This is provided if you have been:

• continuously employed with an employer for at least twelve months preceding the eighth week before the expected week of childbirth;
• notifying your employer in writing that you are pregnant at least eight weeks before the expected week of childbirth;
• if required by the employer, you need to provide a medical practitioner’s certificate stating the expected or actual birth date; and
• notifying your employer in writing at least twenty-one days before the day the you propose to begin your maternity leave.

An additional period of 100 days, consecutive or non-consecutive, can be granted following the 45 days to the employee without pay upon providing a medical report evidencing your illness which prevents you from returning back to work, or if it is confirmed by a competent health authority that the illness was caused by the employee’s work or delivery. During the 18 months following the delivery that you are nursing, you are entitled to two breaks of not more than 30 minutes each in addition to her daily break.

If you are working in the Dubai government sector, according to an amended Dubai Government HR Law No 14 of 2010, you are eligible for 60 days paid maternity leave and 100 days unpaid leave. Another recent government law provides for crèche facilities in government departments for young children of female government employees.

You can find a statement on the UAE Government website that the Federal National Council (FNC) in 1999 approved a law allowing maternity leave of 3 months on full pay and an additional 6 months on half pay by amending the text of Article 55. This is not a Labor Law article, and only applies to UAE national women.