| Islam, Women and Feminism | |
| 11 Jul 2011, NewAgeIslam.Com |
| Saudi Arabia: Undercover Revolution | ||
 In deeply conservative Saudi Arabia, where King Abdullah's government moved this year to further open jobs and education for women and responded surprisingly leniently last week to the most significant protest in decades against the kingdom's ban on women driving, this summer is what amounts to hopeful times for supporters of greater freedom for Saudi women. Then Bakr, now a university professor, stops herself. She slaps her hand to her forehead. “Oh, my God, “she moans. “I can't believe its 20 years later and we're still talking about women driving. “--Ellen Knickmeyer | ||
| Saudi Arabia: Undercover Revolution | |
By Ellen Knickmeyer
JOBS after decades of protests, Saudi Arabia wakes up in small measure to women's rights even conservative women (in Saudi Arabia) who oppose other moves, such as allowing women to drive, are applauding the lingerie measure
On the “ladies' level“ at the Kingdom Centre shopping mall in the Saudi capital, winds of change for Saudi women are blowing among racks of bras. Gender barriers are falling among the body-shapers and panties. In what Saudi activists argue is one of several potentially momentous moves to ease some of the toughest strictures in the world upon women, Saudi Arabia says that it is remaking employment regulations -so that women clerks can wait upon female customers in lingerie stores.
Never mind that it took changes in the labor law in 2005-2006, a boycott and online campaigns by Saudi female activists, and, ultimately, personal intervention by King Abdullah himself this month to counter fatwas regarding lingerie clerks, simply so that Saudi women wouldn't have to talk to male clerks about cup sizes and overflowing muffin tops.
In deeply conservative Saudi Arabia, where King Abdullah's government moved this year to further open jobs and education for women and responded surprisingly leniently last week to the most significant protest in decades against the kingdom's ban on women driving, this summer is what amounts to hopeful times for supporters of greater freedom for Saudi women.
(King Abdullah's edict, yet to be implemented, requires that female clerks sell what the king called “women's necessities, “even in malls where men are present. Currently, most stores in Saudi Arabia, and the majority of workplaces overall, are staffed by men -Saudi women make up less than 15 percent of Saudi nationals in the workforce. The exceptions include female education and health care, and segregated women-only malls and “ladies' levels,“ where women can shop alone among other women, at a price premium.) SUPPORT FROM ALL QUARTERS Even conservative women who oppose other moves, such as allowing women to drive, are applauding the lingerie measure. “I'm married, so I wanted to buy something a little sexy,“ Fatima, a 22-year-old in niqab that covers all but her eyes, explains to me after buying something lacy and floral on the ladies' level. “These are sensitive issues, and I definitely would not buy from a man.
I support this change. “
Reem Asaad, a banker and analyst in Jiddah who was one of the leaders of the campaign for female lingerie clerks, started the lingerie effort after receiving one-too-many unwelcome bits of advice from a male clerk about her underwear, she says. Ultimately, though, Asaad told me in a phone call, her campaign has been about economic justice, starting with what activists say is the more than $1 billion annual lingerie trade in Saudi.
Thanks to the single promised change regarding lingerie stores, “thousands of women can now set foot in the working pool of people, “ Asaad says.
“This cannot be bad. “
Smashing one of the first of many barriers to mixing genders in the workplace may lead to breakthroughs in other professional and trade fields, says Princess Ameerah al-Taweel. The wife of a Saudi prince who is one of the world's wealthiest men, Taweel, at 28, has emerged as an outspoken advocate of women's driving, employment, and education.
“This step will lead to other steps, and people will get used to the sight of women working, “the princess told me.
“This is a big step for us. “
In general, most of the restrictions on Saudi women are meant to block mingling of the sexes in shops, workplaces, and schools, which many in the country's Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam say is immoral.
ECONOMIC IMPACT The ban on women driving alone amounts to a $10,000 annual tax on women -the yearly salary of a hired driver, blogger Eman Fahad Al Nafjan says. Nafjan also cited cases of divorced or widowed mothers of grown daughters forced to live off charity even though they are fully employable.
Ultimately, economics should force some of the barriers to fall, says John Sfakianakis, chief economist at Banque Saudi Fransi in Riyadh.
King Abdullah typically casts his measures for women as economic and employment opportunities rather than as rights issues. Saudis who support his changes believe he has managed, six years into his reign, to come to terms with more conservative elements both in his family and in the country's religious establishment. Some say they see exposure to the Internet, and to dialogue on Facebook and Twitter, as broadening Saudis' points of view, and that the king needs to push harder.
Women's issues often have strained Saudi society, and at times threatened even the al-Saud monarchy. King Faisal deployed troops in the 1960s to keep open one of the country's first schools for girls. The religious extremists who took over the Grand Mosque at Mecca in 1979 were motivated in part by anger over newly arriving satellite dishes that were streaming images of unveiled women into Saudi homes.
In 1990, when 47 women staged the last significant demonstration over driving in Saudi Arabia, angry crowds of religious conservatives mobbed government buildings in protest. Fawziah al-Bakr and the other 46 women drove on a Tuesday, in 1990, she recalls. By Friday, mosque speakers were calling the names of Bakr, her husband, and the others from minarets, and urging that they be killed.
This time, the response to a June 17 driving protest by a new generation of women has been more muted, she acknowledges -a few traffic tickets from police, some sputtering in Internet chat rooms.
Then Bakr, now a university professor, stops herself. She slaps her hand to her forehead. “Oh, my God, “she moans.
“I can't believe its 20 years later and we're still talking about women driving. “
Ellen Knickmeyer is a former Washington Post Middle East bureau chief and Associated Press Africa bureau chief. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting contributed to the costs of reporting this article.
Source: Hindustan Times, New Delhi
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9:32 PM
Moderate Islamist here
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