Saudi Women Shatter the Lingerie Ceiling

Big story in today's New York Times - about the lingerie law. By now, readers of this blog should know that a new law has taken effect in Saudi Arabia, making it mandatory for Saudi lingerie shops to be staffed by women. This is a huge step forward, and it is, in my opinion (as well as Thomas Lipman the author of this piece) a step to preparing Saudi society, and Saudi women for greater things, like driving. On the NYT page there is an interview with Reem Asaad who led the lingerie campaign. As Lippman mentions in the last paragraph, he expects women will soon be permitted to drive. Notice the graphic of a bra and car keys! A link to the story is here and the text is below.
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Saudi Women Shatter the Lingerie Ceiling - Thomas Lippman

SOCIAL revolution began in Saudi Arabia this month, and it has little if anything to do with the Arab Spring. Women are going to work in lingerie shops.

(drawing by Kelsey Dake)

The Ministry of Labor is enforcing a royal decree issued last summer ordering that sales personnel in shops selling garments and other goods, like cosmetics, that are only for women must be female. More than 28,000 women applied for the jobs, the ministry said. Anywhere else in the world, it would not be news that sales assistants in shops selling panties and bras were female. In Saudi Arabia, where women have always been excluded from the public work force, it is a critical breakthrough. This is not just about intimate garments; this is a milestone on the arduous path to employment equality for women in a country where they are systematically excluded from retail activity.

Saudi Arabia’s economic planners recognize that if women are going to be educated at public expense, as they now are in increasing numbers, they will expect to work and the country will need their economic output. Society has increasingly accepted the idea that women will work outside the home. They have long been employed in medicine and education. Retail commerce, however, has generally remained closed because such work usually requires interaction with men, which is prohibited. The lingerie shops are breaking that taboo.

One of the oddest sights in Saudi Arabia is that of fully veiled women, hidden from others by their enveloping garments, going into the Saudi equivalent of Victoria’s Secret stores in the many upscale malls and being greeted and assisted exclusively by male sales clerks, most of whom are from South Asia. This absurd situation so embarrassed many women that they waited until they were out of the country to buy their underwear and nightgowns.

The campaign to change the rules began several years ago, and was led by Reem Asaad, a fashion-conscious financial adviser who speaks flawless English and is comfortable with the Western media. It appeared to have succeeded in 2006 when the government ordered that the sales jobs be transferred to women. But social conservatives and the religious establishment objected, arguing that Islam prohibited women from working outside the home and that putting women in retail shops would expose them to the view of any passing stranger. If the sales clerks were female, the shop windows would have to be covered, the opponents said.

Shop owners objected, too, saying that no women were trained to do such work. In addition, the 2006 decree failed to address the transportation problem: if women were going to work in those shops, they would need a man to drive them because they are prohibited from driving. Saudi cities have virtually no public transportation. So the decree was never enforced. Ms. Asaad then used Facebook to organize a boycott of the shops, and arranged for some women to be trained in retail work.

This time, King Abdullah has put his personal authority behind the new decree. Last year he also installed a new minister of labor, Adel Fakieh, who had embraced the idea of employing women at a supermarket chain owned by his holding company. Under the new rules, the country’s thousands of lingerie and cosmetics shops have until June to replace their male employees with women. The feared religious police, who are really the behavior police, have been ordered to cooperate.

King Abdullah generally supported an expansion of opportunities for women, but steps in this direction can’t be traced to any burst of enlightenment within the royal family. They are happening because the kingdom’s women need and want jobs and are learning how to make themselves heard — and because, in an increasingly expensive country, their husbands often want them to work.

Over the coming generation, this is likely to be the farthest-reaching transformation in Saudi society. While women are still constrained by law, religion and custom, more and more are likely to enter the work force. They will be better educated than their predecessors, will marry later and will have fewer children. The range of jobs and professions open to them will expand. The Ministry of Labor is already compiling a list of jobs women will be permitted to hold. It won’t include all jobs — no female miners or construction workers here — but it will be a much longer list than in the past, including some positions in law enforcement.

These changes will meet entrenched opposition, but the economic and demographic forces behind them seem irresistible. The transition would be easier if women were permitted to drive (the 2011 decree failed to address that issue), but that is bound to come, too — if not this year, then soon, if only because growing ranks of employed women will build pressure for it. Thousands of Saudi women have driver’s licenses issued by other countries; they will be ready when the day comes.

Thomas Lippman is a scholar at the Middle East Institute and the author of “Saudi Arabia on the Edge: The Uncertain Future of an American Ally.”

VOA seeking interviews with Saudi women involved in driving campaign

Today I received an e-mail from David Arnold of the Voice of America. His message is as follows. If you are willing to speak with him, please contact him by e-mail at: voadavid@gmail.com

I would like to interview by telephone 2 or 3 Saudi women who are making a substantive effort to change Saudi custom regarding the ban on women driving cars in the kingdom. Perhaps Manal al-Sharif, a lawyer, someone who has access to a member of the royal family who would be available for interviews on Thursday or Friday of this week. I'm interested in learning of a practical political strategy that effects change and how they hope to accomplish it. Please reply to my e-mail address: voadavid@gmail.com

Regards,
David Arnold
English for the Middle East
Voice of America

Saudi girl steps into the world of automobile mechanics

Great story in the Saudi Gazette - a link to the story is here, and the text is pasted below. Not sure if the photograph is of Kadeeja herself, or another woman mechanic.

Saudi girl steps into the world of automobile mechanics
By Ayesha Lorenz Sayeed

An aptitude and fondness for cars, gears, mechanics and electronics do not only fascinate boys now, girls are also slowly and steadily entering this field. They have again proven their worth and caliber in another distinct male cherished and dominated sector.

Kadeeja Y. Al-Saeed, a young Saudi girl with a fervor for automobiles, has completed a two year theoretical and practical program of auto repair and maintenance from Portland Community College in Oregon, US.

She had, however, not planned to get in this field. She was taking a pre-requisite course at her community college, when she was offered the basic auto-repair course. Hesitantly, she took up the course and was surprised to find a number of female students, and female instructors, too. Over the course, she discovered that she excelled at it, and was asked to help other students in her class. Her instructors were very proud of her diligent attitude toward her studies, and her lively nature and friendly smile which lit up the class and the auto lab.

She is inspired by her father, a flight engineer. He instilled her with the confidence of pursuing a higher education abroad, and has always shared a special bond of understanding and love with his children. He had also gently advised her to pursue another career, when she chose to enter the auto-repair and maintenance feild. “I hope to study or learn many things in my lifetime that will be useful,” remarked Al-Saeed.

Bedriya, her eldest sister, was awarded with the Best Business Plan in 2007 by Jeddah Economic Forum. She has done her post graduation from Emirates and is now working for General Motors.

“It’s great to think ‘outside the box’ like she does. Innovative ideas enrich society,” she said. She is content with her studies and achievements, and is extremely happy of her siblings, accomplishments. She feels that children strive to work hard and succeed in life, when parents pay attention in their interests, and praise them for their efforts.

Al-Saeed dreams of owning an auto-repair shop where she can cater to women in need of services for their cars. She explains, “It’s really important for females to be able to feel comfortable and at ease when they come for a repair. I was better able to understand this when I dealt with my own car in US.”

Many women want an auto-repair shop run by women themselves as they would prefer to go,for their cars, maintenance, to a female instead of a male. This will also comply with the Islamic ruling of segregation for both genders. __

The Saudi women brain drain

Saudi writer Maha Akeel has penned this opinion piece that first appeared in the Arab News. She deals with the driving issue, among others. Maha is a former staff writer for the Arab News who is now managing editor at the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). You can link to the article here and the text is pasted below.

The Saudi women brain drain

By MAHA AKEEL
Published: Dec 27, 2011 00:40 Updated: Dec 27, 2011 00:40

Wherever I travel East or West, I meet Saudi women who have chosen to live far away from home. Some have been there for decades, they were exceptions at those times, deciding to make a career abroad when there were few graduate and post graduate Saudi females and even fewer job opportunities.

Today, there is a plethora of female graduates in diverse fields of study, but the opportunities remain limited. It is no surprise therefore, with doors being shut on their faces here, to see so many decide to pack and leave toward the doors opening up for them outside. There are the Saudi women scientists, the researchers, the academicians, the teachers, the doctors, the media professionals, the businesswomen, the engineers, the lawyers, the artists, and others in almost every other field.

What a loss. A brain is a brain whether it is in the head of a man or a woman. So much money is invested in the education of girls, yet the return on that investment is minimal. Why let the fruits of that investment grow in foreign soil even if it is a neighborly country?

It is not just the limited job opportunities, but also having a real career. Abroad, the Saudi women are appreciated for their knowledge, skill and talent. They are given, in general, equal opportunity to advance in their career, paid a good salary and work in a comfortable work environment despite it being “mixed.”

The same cannot be said about their work here, especially in the private sector where they are discriminated against in salary, bonuses, training, career advancement and almost every aspect of their work. And being segregated from their male colleagues at the work place does not mean they are safe from harassment. Moreover, the segregation puts them at a disadvantage because they are removed from the decision-making places and process, which is of course male-dominated.

Even the education sector, which employs the highest percentage of women, most of the decisions concerning girls’ education and schools are made by men who have never set foot in a girls’ school. Appointing a woman as deputy minister for girls’ education corrected that a bit, but it is not enough.

And let us talk about driving. Yes, it makes a difference, for any woman let alone a workingwoman. Why should a chunk of a woman’s salary go to a driver? Why should a financially independent woman remain at the mercy of the whims of a man to drive her places? For many of the Saudi women working abroad being free to drive their own cars or use public transportation is enough reason.

How about being able to conduct their business without a male manager, which is a requirement here? I know several businesswomen who took their businesses outside because they found it much easier to work there rather than deal with the hassles and harassments in a country that claims to protect and care for its women (I hesitate to say citizens because legally we are not, we are constantly asked to be identified, represented and permitted by our male guardians).

In addition to the tens of thousands of high-school and university graduates searching for jobs suitable to their qualifications, there is a flock of young women who will be returning from their studies abroad with high expectations, new ideas and dreams of making a difference in their society. What will they find? Brick walls and concrete ceilings. I hope we can offer them the opportunities they desire and deserve.

McManus: Change in Saudi Arabia

Los Angeles Times Op-Ed piece by Doyle McManus; deals with the driving issue among other things women are talking about and fighting for in Saudi Arabia. A link to the story is here and the text is below. It includes an interview with Saudi blogger Eman Al Nafjan, though he spells her name wrong. Eman's blog is here. She is also author of the op-ed in the Arab News that we posted here.

For Saudi women, progress comes slowly, and not at all surely.

Doyle McManus
December 25, 2011

Women in Saudi Arabia won a small but promising victory this year. No, they aren't being allowed to drive; that's still forbidden. Most of the time, they still can't work, travel or even open bank accounts without the approval of a male guardian. But they do have this: Saudi women can now buy lingerie in stores from female salesclerks, instead of the sometimes leering men who used to staff the counters. If this modest wave of liberalization continues, they may even get fitting rooms.

It doesn't sound like much, but in the glacial process of modernization in the tradition-bound kingdom, it's an important step. "This is the beginning of a real social change," Eman Nafjian, one of the new generation of Saudi women's activists, told me over coffee in Riyadh, the capital, last week. "It will allow more women to work in shopping malls. And that's a step toward more opportunities for women's employment in general."

It wasn't easy to win the right to sell lingerie. The change has been debated since 2005, but it was resisted by traditionalists who oppose allowing women to work outside the home — even though, in this case, the prohibition forced women to bargain with men over bras and panties. The rule was changed only after women spent two years agitating through a Facebook campaign called "Enough Embarrassment," and only after the (male) minister of labor was emboldened to obtain and enforce a decree from King Abdullah. (You'd think the king has more important things to do, but a royal decree is the only way anything of significance gets changed in Saudi Arabia.)

That's a microcosm, Nafjian said, of how life is improving for women in Saudi Arabia: slowly, and not at all surely. In Saudi terms, Abdullah is a modernizer; he's promoted education for women, including thousands of college scholarships in the United States, and he's even promised to begin appointing women to his official advisory council, the Shura — but not until 2013. (There's no elected legislature.) Still, each tiny step forward prompts furious resistance from traditionalists, including Islamic scholars who warn that change is irreligious and conservative women who say they like the old ways better.

The debate goes on even in Nafjian's own family, an affluent-but-not-wealthy clan in Riyadh's upper middle class. Her conservative uncle is furious at her for speaking out in public and has demanded that she stop. "He says I'm going to make us all pariahs," she said. "But my father and my brothers stood up for me."

Nafjian, 33, started a blog in English a few years ago, "Saudiwoman's Weblog" (www.saudiwoman.me), that brought the concerns of educated, upwardly mobile Saudi women to a global audience. She's written about basic rights (Saudi women still can't vote), child marriage (in rural areas, girls as young as 8 are sometimes given to older men in marriage) and issues of everyday life, like driving and shopping. "My father would prefer that I blogged about Saudi cooking," she laughed.

She walked into a hotel lobby for our meeting dressed in a black abaya, the head-to-toe garment that Saudi women wear in public, and a veil that concealed most but not all of her hair. She was trailed by her brother Khalid, who came along cheerfully as driver and chaperon. He said he supports her activism. "All these restrictions on women are nuts," he said. Her husband, a telecommunications engineer, supports her stances too, she said. She has three small children, she teaches English, and she's finishing work on a doctorate in linguistics.

The Saudi women's movement won international attention last June when at least five women were arrested for daring to drive their own cars in the country's cities. (Nafjian, who never learned to drive, videotaped the protest as a passenger in a friend's car.) But driving wasn't the main thing that made the government angry (driving by women is tolerated in rural areas); it was the challenge of a noisy, well-publicized protest.

"The driving issue has become a little tedious," Nafjian said. "The ban will be changed one of these days; I'm sure of it. But for the moment, they're happy that all we're asking for is women driving instead of the downfall of the government."

More important than driving, she said, are issues such as basic legal rights (a woman's testimony in court still gets only half the weight of a man's), employment (women are still restricted to jobs where they won't have to mingle with men — mostly teaching, nursing and, now, sales work in women's shops), and the persistent rural practice of forcing young girls into marriage. "It's socially unacceptable to most Saudis," Nafjian said, "but it's a tradition, so there's a lot of resistance to outlawing it."

Does that mean Saudi Arabia's modernizing urban women want to scrap the monarchy — the ultimate patriarchal system — and fast-forward to democracy? Quite the contrary. "A revolution like the ones they had in Egypt and Tunisia would be the worst-case scenario here," Nafjian said. "Most Saudis are conservative. A popular uprising here would make the [militant] Salafists in Egypt look like liberals. We would turn into Taliban."

If she's right, the country's liberals, democrats and cultural modernizers are trapped in the odd predicament of relying on an 87-year-old king and his male heirs for protection. The best-case scenario, she said, would be for a progressive wing of the royal family to rise to power once Abdullah is gone, men who would continue nudging the Saudi economy into the 21st century while keeping the nation's politics firmly rooted in the 7th. But there's no guarantee; the heir to the throne, Crown Prince Nayef, is a noted conservative — and an apparently healthy 78.

Meanwhile, Nafjian said, Saudi Arabia's women will keep organizing through private coffee circles and Internet chatrooms. "We can't be a formal association," she noted. "That's illegal."

And they'll welcome all the foreign attention they can get, as they did during the one-day driving protest in June.

"When foreigners make noise over women's rights, that's a good thing, because we're not allowed to," she said. "The more embarrassing an issue is to the government, the more likely it is to be resolved."

After all, they did get that change in the lingerie stores. By this time next year, with luck, they might even be allowed to drive.

doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Saudis could still flog woman who dared to drive

A link to the story is here; story pasted in below.

Supposedly pardoned, Shaima Jastaniya could yet punished after Crown Prince's intervention

LAST UPDATED AT 08:44 ON Thu 22 Dec 2011

A SAUDI woman sentenced to ten lashes for flouting the country's ban on women driving has not been officially pardoned, despite reports to the contrary - and her sentence may still be carried out at any time.

Shaima Jastaniya, 34, was given the draconian sentence by a court in Jedda in September after she persistently ignored the ban, which is not enshrined in law but handed down in fatwas by Muslim clerics, making Saudi Arabia the only country in the world where women are not allowed to drive.

Then 87-year-old King Adbullah, who has overseen a gentle thawing of his hardline rule in recent years, announced he had pardoned Jastaniya – a move much reported in the world's media.

Now The Times reports that the increasingly powerful – and conservative – Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz has exerted his influence to make sure Abdullah’s pardon has no real force.

Jastaniya's father was summoned to the Interior Ministry last week, the paper reports, to be told that his daughter was pardoned. However, when he asked for written guarantees that she would not be flogged, his request was refused.

The newspaper says it has learned that the original punishment could still be carried out at any time – and the verdict has not been overturned. Activist Mohammed al-Qahtani told the paper: "They will keep this hanging over her in case she does anything else."

Jastaniya has become the focal point for a campaign of civil disobedience by women drivers which culminated in a 'mass drive' where 50 women flouted the ban in convoy, writing about it later on social networking sights.

Aware that it was the focus of world attention, the authorities let the protest go ahead unhindered. It seemed like a watershed moment, but there has been a quiet crackdown since.

One woman activist in Riyadh told the Times anonymously: "The campaign is dying right now. People are afraid. They have seen what happened to Shaima and the others." ·

Women driving: Topic is getting tedious

Op-ed by Saudi writer Eman al-Nafjan. A link to the story is here text pasted in below.

By EMAN ALNAFJAN

Published: Dec 18, 2011 23:23 Updated: Dec 18, 2011 23:23

Supporters and opponents of the ban agree it is a petty issue

The ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia is a topic that has become tedious due to the uncountable times it has been written about since the 1980s.

Saudi Arabia is infamous for its gender discrimination When it comes to who gets to sit in the driver's seat. The only thing that rivals it in what the country is known for globally is our never-ending supply of oil. What is ironic is that on both sides, Saudis who oppose and those who are calling for lifting the ban, is that they are in agreement that the whole issue is petty.

Both sides, though, come to this same conclusion of pettiness from different perspectives. Those who are calling for the lift of the ban on women driving point out how the ban is basically put in place as an obstacle to women who otherwise would go out into the workplace and most probably compete with men. However, this obstacle consequently extends to obstructing ease of access to education, health care, work in completely gender-segregated environments and even the basic right to socialize or leave the house for a change of scenery.

Another reason that the ban is in place is the argument that a man in the driver's seat is a deterrent to neighboring cars from flirting with the women passengers. This whole line of reasoning is easily shot down. First of all, who is to say that the employed driver himself won't harass the women passengers? Secondly, I cannot count the times I've come across Saudi men who completely ignored the driver's presence and dangerously harassed and chased cars that carry women passengers.

Harassment on the streets will not stop until as a short-term measure we have strict laws that deter men from even considering lifting up their pre-written signs of their cell phone numbers while they drive precariously next to family cars driven by foreign drivers. The long-term measure would be to throw out the whole wolf-hunting-lambs rhetoric that we keep drilling into the heads of our young people until they really believe that being hunter and prey is just the way it's meant to be rather than mutual respect. For those who oppose women driving, they come to the “pettiness” conclusion from the perspective of prioritization. They, in a rather elitist tone, put the ban mildly as an occasional inconvenience rather than a full-blown obstacle. And since it is merely an occasional inconvenience there are more pertinent women's rights issues to speak out about.

They keep asking people involved in women driving campaigns why they aren't putting this energy into calling for the rights of divorced women to child custody and stable and secure alimony. Or why aren't they putting this energy into equal rights in pension plans regardless of gender. Or even audaciously demanding that instead of facilitating women transportation we should be calling on the government to pay women a stipend to stay home.

Those who oppose women driving have come to this pettiness conclusion after being cornered because their previous religious and traditions arguments have deteriorated in front of Saudi religious scholars and sheikhs who have publicly stated that there is no religious reason to prohibit women from driving and traditional Beduin women have been driving in rural areas for years. The best thing about this decades-old argument and dialogue is that it's not as stagnant as it might seem to the Saudi people.

Having reached the same conclusion, especially for the latter group of those who oppose, we can be much more optimistic about actually reaching a breakthrough. In the 1980s and 90s we were calling for something that according to the public forum was a threat to our religion, traditions and our very way of life. Now after all this back and forth, it has whittled down to a petty cause that is not worth the time and effort of national campaigns.

Although this could be considered an insult to those of us who have worked long and hard on these campaigns and have spoken out against this ban, I think most of us are extremely happy that we have made this much progress and are optimistic that this is only a sign of the ban being lifted in the near future.