Breaking news: Sheikh Ahmed al-Ghamdi, the Mecca head of the branch of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (or in short the Saudi Religious Police) has criticized the kingdom’s ban on gender mixing, the fact that Saudi women who are made to wear the veil and the Saudi law banning women from driving. Not just one but three aspects dealing with women’s life and women’s rights in the Kingdom are being challenged. In the past few weeks, we’ve noticed a lot of talk about women working at cash registers in some stores. Of course, we are not seeing them in Riyadh yet, as this is mainly happening in liberal Jeddah, but even there the people are quite divided. Some are lauding it as progress for women across the kingdom, others are outraged at women working and checking out men’s groceries in stores.
Consider this: many women are graduating from university and find themselves unemployed because a law is not allowing them to mix with unrelated men on the workplace. Plus they cannot drive themselves to work and have to rely on drivers to take them anywhere, so it really isn’t easy being a Saudi woman trying to work here.
I’m not sure where all this will lead, but I just hope that women will be able to do as they please, to cover or not to cover if they decide to and maybe, one day, to get in their car and drive themselves wherever they want. All these changes will take time and I doubt I will still be in the Kingdom when they happen!
"No need" for women to cover... click this link for the article itself and to read comments to it!
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