It would be bizarre in any country to find that its lingerie shops are staffed entirely by men.
But in Saudi Arabia — an ultra-conservative nation where unmarried men and women cannot even be alone in a room together if they are not related — it is strange in the extreme.
“The way that underwear is being sold in Saudi Arabia is simply not acceptable to any population living anywhere in the modern world,” says Reem Asaad, a lecturer at Bar al-Hikma Women’s College in Jeddah, who is leading a campaign to get women working in lingerie shops rather than men.
In theory, it should be easy enough to get women to staff lingerie shops, but parts of Saudi society are still very traditional and don’t like the idea of women working.
Nura, an administrative clerk at a college, says she never buys lingerie in Saudi Arabia anymore. “It’s really embarrassing. They try to give comments — ‘this might suit you better than that’ — it’s really not ethical.”
To be fair to the male shop workers, many of them find the experience just as embarrassing as their women customers.
They are torn, says Reem, between trying to do their job as salespeople and not stepping on any toes by doing something inappropriate, that could land them in hot water “Since we do have the option of replacing male salespeople with female salespeople, I don’t see why this situation should continue.
Because physical contact between unmarried men and women in Saudi Arabia is forbidden under strict segregation laws, women can also not be properly measured for their underwear. Worse still, the kingdom’s religious police forbid lingerie shops even to have fitting rooms.
So if a customer wants to try an item on, she first has to pay for it, and then go to a public toilet to see if it fits. If it doesn’t, she can easily get a refund, but most women find the experience so humiliating, they buy items without trying them on, only to get them home and find they don’t fit.
Reem’s campaign began on the social networking website Facebook and is gradually getting larger. Even Saudi Arabia’s male-dominated press is starting to take note, with several newspapers reporting on her fight.
The situation is all the more frustrating because the relevant legislation is already in place.
In 2006, the Saudi government passed a law stating that women should be allowed to staff any shops that sell women’s items, be it clothing, accessories or underwear.
But the law has still not been properly implemented. No official reason is given for this, but one probable cause is that hiring female staff would put a lot of men out of work — not a popular move in a country where 13 per cent of men are unemployed.
There are also Saudi Arabia’s Muslim clerics to contend with. They wield a great deal of power in the kingdom and still believe a woman’s natural environment is in the home.
(International Herald Tribune)
 |
April 2009 |