Saudi Women Want To Buy Their Bras & Panties From Other Women

Professor Reem Asaad, an economics professor at Dar al-Hikma Women's College in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has called for a two-week-long boycott of lingerie stores with male employees.

She and many others believe that it is indecent and against their religion for men to know women's underwear sizes when the men and women are unrelated.

The core of all the controversy is that women are not allowed to have jobs anywhere that men do. The Wahhabi strain of Islam, practiced in Saudi Arabia, entails separation of the sexes. The fact that men are giving women their underwear sizes is therefore beyond ironic.

Further adding to the ludicrousness of the situation, women cannot even be correctly measured for their underwear sizes because the male employees are not allowed to do so.

Although Saudi Arabia's Labour Ministry passed a law stating that only women would be employed in lingerie shops, the law has not been implemented. Because of this, Professor Reem Asaad has used her Facebook page to mobilize a boycott. Since public protests are not allowed in Saudi Arabia, a boycott or petition is usually the best possible means of mobilizing widespread support for change.

The entire situation, quite frankly, is preposterous. It is the government's responsibility to support every person, regardless of gender, in their endeavors. Separation of men and women is going to have to be dismantled eventually; if not now, then very soon, and it will probably be very ugly.

And who gets the bad end of the deal here? Women, of course. No, there is no issue with women being employed in stores for men because women are not allowed to have jobs where men work. Women would have to work in women-only stores if they wanted to have a sales job. Why is there this double standard? Why are women in Saudi Arabia clearly secondary to men?

Click here to read the full story:
By Yasmin Radbod
The Retriever Weekly

Related links:
More About Lingerie on AWR
More About Saudi Arabia on AWR