Saudi’s Lingerie Liberals
A campaign to allow women to buy lingerie from female sales staff is at the center of a debate to recognize a woman’s right to work in conservative Saudi Arabia. In a state where women are forbidden from interacting with unrelated men, many women still have to buy their lingerie from male sales staff. Reem Assad, a finance lecturer at a women’s college, launched a boycott of lingerie shops that do not have female sales associates. She wants to teach women that their role as consumers gives them real power.
Yet even the more modest measure of allowing women to work in women only sections of shopping centers has been met with disdain by religious authorities within the kingdom. These conservative clerics have a strong influence on government and generally oppose women working—especially in mixed gender areas such as shopping malls, where most lingerie stores exist.
Men working at the lingerie stores also oppose the lingerie activists. Their opposition is to be expected—particularly at a time when unemployment is so high. Saudi estimates the male unemployment rate to be at just under 12%; other sources estimate it could be as high as 25%. The unemployment rate may share some of the blame for opposition to laws passed by reformists in the Kingdom that allow women to work in segregated women-only zones. One man defended male sales associates by claiming that 70% of his customers are men buying gifts for their wives.
This issue has implications that reach far beyond just women being able to comfortably buy their lingerie. Assad’s use of social networking sites has attracted international attention. A group of sales associates at Victoria’s Secret donated bras to facilitate a training class for potential female sales associates. And while Saudi is not changing as fast as some of its Gulf neighbors, this campaign highlights the increased role women are starting to play in the Saudi public sphere. 15% of the labor force are female compared to just a generation ago, when virtually no women worked outside the home. Female students outnumber male students at universities, and women are being appointed to public office by reformists in the government. As women become more educated and want to pursue more opportunities outside the home, the government will be forced to make some difficult choices. A law passed in 2006 allows women to work in shops in segregated areas that sell only women’s clothing, but religious clerics have slowed its implementation. The lingerie boycott is using this law to advance its goals.
Where will this debate lead? Already women are starting to complain about social customs that require a male chaperone, and since women cannot drive by law, many middle class and working class women find the expense of hiring a driver a serious obstacle. Even when women can afford a driver, the driver is a foreign male. Being in car with an unrelated male can come with dire consequences in Saudi Arabia. When a young woman was kidnapped and gang raped in 2006 by seven men, the court punished her for being in a car with unrelated males. For women who need to work to support their family’s economic livelihood, these laws pose a real problem.
Government officials in Saudi Arabia have only to look across the Persian Gulf to Iran for an example of what could happen. For close to two decades Iranian women have outnumbered Iranian men in colleges and universities. And Iran’s youth have consistently used new developments in social technology to undermine clerical norms regarding social behavior—as the younger Saudi generation does now. Saudi’s lingerie liberals, however, are not even trying to undermine norms about opposite gender contact—they’re actually exposing the anachronisms inherent in the current system that force rather uncomfortable contact between men and women. Yet, if successful, the movement to allow women to work in lingerie stores, even in mixed areas, will be a step toward allowing a greater role for women in the public sphere. As the regime and Saudis navigate this political landscape between reformist-minded officials, a more educated generation coming of age, and conservative religious clerics looking to remain in authority, Saudi could find itself looking more and more like its main regional rival across the Gulf.
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It always worries me to hear about women having to fight for the right to be treated equally in other countries. I understand the religious traditions where these views have come from, but I believe that all countries should have separation of church and state. This would mean that only the women who feel God doesn't want them to work, for example, would follow that rule, but other women with a different viewpoint would be free to follow their own opinion.
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