This paper examines the transformation in the lives of pastoral women – subsistence goat herders- in the context of mobile camel and goat herding economies of Oman and the United Arab Emirates. After a brief review of women and gender roles in Western academic and popular literature, the paper explores the impact that the deep isolation of the Trucial Coast and the Sultanate of Oman prior to 1970, has had on the in extraordinarily rapid and extensive modernization in the region. Taking as a case study one of the most isolated social groups in southeast Arabia, the Harasiis tribe, it catalogues the impact of government promoted projects to modernize and develop the society. The paper analyses the transformation in tribal women’s roles in the transnational desert of South East Arabia between 1980 to the present time. It puts forward the hypothesis that unlike other cases of herding societies where modernization has meant settlement, and loss of status (e.g. the Negev Bedouin women) women of the desert tribes of Oman and the UAE have maintained, if not actually strengthen, their socio-economic status and family management roles. The curious twist here is that during the prolonged absences of menfolk for as much as 80% of the year, woman have stepped up to run large extended households and engage with local authority in the sponsorship and management of multiple hired help for the subsistence herds as well as household work.