Thanks to everyone for replies.

It's good info for me to start with. I'll check out the links. ************* looks like a good place to start.

Yeah, being female I suspected that there may be some (perhaps, unsaid) preferences given to male pilots just because of cultural specifics in that part of the world. That's why I'm leaning more towards corporate flying, should we move to UAE. Hopefully business aviation companies will have a more of a "case by case" approach to the hiring process as opposed to the rigid airline requirements.

I'll keep doing the research, since there's still some time before we have to make big decisions. Gotta start doing the homework now though