That's right. It took a decree from the king himself to end an ironic consequence of the strict separation of the genders, whereby Saudi women actually had to buy lingerie from men because of a ban across the board on female sales clerks.
Not surprisingly, the retailers continue to look for excuses to get around the decree. "Lingerie shops told to honor deadline for hiring women," by Rima al-Mukhtar for Arab News, October 13 (thanks to Kenneth):
JEDDAH: Shops selling women’s fashion and lingerie that continue to employ male staff will be prevented from obtaining services offered by the Ministry of Labor if they do not start hiring women immediately.
In 2005 the Ministry of Labor ordered lingerie shops to start replacing foreign male sales clerks with women. It has been more than five years now and only the Nayomi lingerie chain and Centrepoint have successfully hired women clerks in their shops all over the Kingdom.
“If by January these shops are still employing salesmen, they will be barred from all the ministry's services including, among others, issuance of work visas to recruit manpower from abroad,” said ministry spokesman Hattab bin Saleh Al-Anzi.
Al-Anzi said in July 2011 the ministry gave shops that sell make-up, women’s clothing, abayas and accessories one year to ensure all their staff are women. “This grace period will end in July 2012, after which these shops will face sanctions from the ministry,” he said.
Reem Asaad, a member of the Saudi Economic Society who has been calling for boycotting lingerie shops not employing women, said that there should not be any slackness in the implementation of the ministry's directives. She added that many women’s shops in Jeddah had complied, but outlets in other cities had not.
Asaad doubted that shopping centers and malls took the ministry's orders seriously and recalled that a mall recently asked her to help find 450 jobs for men. “How can we be serious in employing women if such shops are still looking to employ men?” she asked.
The ministry said women’s shops include those selling women’s clothing, whether it was on the street or within shopping centers. It asked the shops to provide rest rooms for employees and asked women staff to be decently covered.
Fatima Qaroob, founder of the “Enough Embarrassment” campaign that calls for saleswomen to be employed in lingerie shops, said the 2005 order was issued by the Labor Ministry, while the one issued in 2011 had royal approval.
An account of exactly how awkward the encounter can be appeared in Time magazine earlier this year.
“Four years after the ministerial decree, I met with lingerie shop owners and asked them the reason why they were not complying and they claimed the ministry did not send an official request demanding them to employ women,” she said. “I believe businessmen are just lazy and they claim that it is difficult to train women.”...
Women in the land of the 'two holy places' actually wear lingerie? Oh, the humanity!
l thin they want to keep the cross dressers hired in these stores.. where else can they find jobs!
How dare women work!
Isn't banning lingerie the more correct (Islamic) thing to do?
Who treats these women in medical matters & medical examinations, if women are not allowed education and therefore cannot become nurses and doctors, 'strange men' or are they all related and been breast feed by the same woman?
Saudi Arabia oppresses women.
Another "dog bites man" story.
Saudi Arabia is an extremely static society, very non-productive, kept in place by dumb luck in sitting on vast oil deposits. Most prosperity comes from government handouts, so the normal dynamism of true commercial competition doesn't apply.
Saudi Arabia's fate is to either be overrun by Iran, or experience a social revolution which will make Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Tunisia put together seem like a birthday party. The women will briefly experience a bit of freedom, then sink down into even worse oppression, as local imams enforce Sharia, unfettered by any semblance of a central authority.
I just have one question.
If they are insisting on female salespersons, who is going to wait on the men trying to buy a "not-so-ghastly" abaya for their expat wife at the compound?
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Haram!
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Islam is screwy, and destroys the ability to reason.
It's all about voyeurism, if you ask me. They don't want to give it up.
Words have gender, people have sex. Please do not surrender to the radical left by submitting to their manipulation of the English language.
"Saudi women actually had to buy lingerie from men"
What if a man wants to buy lingerie?
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2010/03/transvestite-muhammad-mahomet-le.html
Such a dilemma. Islam forbids women to even stand too close to or talk to a man lest they be stoned to death for sexual crimes based on an allegation alone. Women can be "legally" (under Sharia law which enforces Islamic principles) raped by their husbands and used as "temporary wives" (contract prostitutes) and sex slaves (if they are non-Muslim captives). So, women are kept prisoners at home, forbidden to go out unless wrapped in a tent and accompanied by a male relative (to keep them under control and so they don't incite anyone to rape them, for which the women would be stoned), and are not allowed to work. Under Islam, women would need to go only to female doctors, dentists, and even cashiers to prevent being stoned. Under Islam, it is dangerous for a woman to purchase lingerie from a man and equally dangerous for a woman to sell lingerie to a man. Yet, if women are not allowed to work, how will they find female doctors, dentists, cashiers, etc., to go to? No wonder Islam forbids rational analysis or criticism of Islam or Mohammad's example, it does not even measure up to human reasonableness.
Re lingerie.
A passage from Geraldine Brooks' 1994 book 'Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women'.
In chapter 9, 'Risky Business'.
Ms Brooks is on board a plane heading for Saudi Arabia.
"Once, heading to Saudi Arabia, I'd sat next to a Saudi who had been grappling for a year with the issue of what kind of job might be appropriate for his wife.
"His own business was trading, and he became increasingly edgy when our plane approached Jeddah.
'As we circled for landing, he mopped his brow with a large white handkerchief. He was worried about the underwear in his luggage.
"More than two hundred brassieres", he whispered. "I bought them in London, from Marks and Spencer. **All made in Israel** {my emphasis - dda}.
'Saudi Arabia enforced a boycott on goods from the land it referred to as 'the Zionist entity'.
'So the night before, in his London hotel, he had sat up late with a thick marker pen, writing Saudi-riyal prices over the offending labels to make the country of origin illegible.
"But by the end I was very tired", he said. "If I missed one, and customs sees it, I will be in big trouble. " He swabbed again at his brow. "What can I do? I'm a trader, **and these are the brassieres that Saudi women like to buy** {my emphasis - dda}."
(Teehee...it takes the Israelis, from a culture that genuinely loves and treasures women, to make the best bras...and where there's a good product, there will be customers...dda)
In the event, Brooks tells us, he managed to sneak his bras-made-by-the-eevil-Jooz successfully past the Customs inspection.
"The trader, Mohamed, had been lucky. I saw him in the arrival hall, grinning broadly. The illicit bras had passed inspection".
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