Few lines for editing

[Mohammed Abu Risha]

Dear Colleagues

Could you please edit this for me:

Throughout history, the Emirates' woman played a vital social role. Men had to leave their homes and sail in the sea [in pursuit of pearls] for as long as four months leaving the chores of life and family subsistence to be shouldered by women, and on a water-scarce desert soil, women had to grow crops to feed their family members."

Thank you in advance

[David L.]

Throughout history, the Emirates' woman played a vital social role. Men had to leave their homes and sail in the sea [in pursuit of pearls] for as long as four months leaving the chores of life and family subsistence to be shouldered by women, and on a water-scarce desert soil, women had to grow crops to feed their family members."


'Throughout' : this indicates a period of time, a time span, so rather than just the past tense 'played', ( a past tense verb refers to a moment in time in the past), we need to use the Present Perfect tense:
Also, 'Emirates' is not being used in the sense that the country 'possessed' the woman - it is like an adjective modifying the noun 'woman': not a British woman but an Emirites woman. We don't use the possessive case.

Throughout history, the Emirates woman has played a vital social role.
Men had to leave their homes and sail the seas in their pursuit of pearls for as long as four months at a time,leaving the chores of life and family subsistence to be shouldered by women.

Wow. Take a breath! We need to pause, so note the comma, and break the passage into more sentences.

and on a water-scarce desert soil, women had to grow crops to feed their family members."
We have to join this now a little better with the preceding sentence:
On water-scarce desert soil, they had to grow the crops that fed their family members.

[Mohammed Abu Risha]

Thank you David for the remarks.