Foreign Policy: Lingerie Store Redefines 'Support'
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—On the "ladies' level" at the Kingdom Centre shopping mall in the Saudi capital, winds of change for Saudi women are blowing among the 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 this spring and summer 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.
"This is something great! A huge change," says 18-year-old Latifa al-Fahed, scanning the racks in the lingerie section at the Kingdom Centre's Debenhams department store.
(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.)
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."
While on the surface quite small, each of the pending changes, Saudi activists argue, should be viewed as a chipping away at the gender segregation that crushes the employment prospects of most of the kingdom's more than 10 million Saudi women and drains fortunes from Saudi women and their families.
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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. RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—On the "ladies' level" at
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