First the women of Saudi Arabia changelled their inability to drive, now what to those in the West seems incomprehensible - being able to purchase underwear, not from male employees in shops, but women saleswomen.
"On the "ladies' level" at the Kingdom Centre shopping mall in the Saudi capital, winds of change for Saudi women are blowing among the racks of bras. Gender barriers are falling among the body-shapers and panties. In what Saudi activists argue is one of several potentially momentous moves this spring and summer to ease some of the toughest strictures in the world upon women, Saudi Arabia says that it is remaking employment regulations -- so that women clerks can wait upon female customers in lingerie stores.
Never mind that it took changes in the labor law in 2005-2006, a boycott and online campaigns by Saudi female activists, and, ultimately, personal intervention by King Abdullah himself this month to counter fatwas regarding lingerie clerks, simply so that Saudi women wouldn't have to talk to male clerks about cup sizes and overflowing muffin tops.
In deeply conservative Saudi Arabia, where King Abdullah's government moved this year to further open jobs and education for women and responded surprisingly leniently last week to the most significant protest in decades against the kingdom's ban on women driving, this summer is what amounts to hopeful times for supporters of greater freedom for Saudi women."
"On the "ladies' level" at the Kingdom Centre shopping mall in the Saudi capital, winds of change for Saudi women are blowing among the racks of bras. Gender barriers are falling among the body-shapers and panties. In what Saudi activists argue is one of several potentially momentous moves this spring and summer to ease some of the toughest strictures in the world upon women, Saudi Arabia says that it is remaking employment regulations -- so that women clerks can wait upon female customers in lingerie stores.
Never mind that it took changes in the labor law in 2005-2006, a boycott and online campaigns by Saudi female activists, and, ultimately, personal intervention by King Abdullah himself this month to counter fatwas regarding lingerie clerks, simply so that Saudi women wouldn't have to talk to male clerks about cup sizes and overflowing muffin tops.
In deeply conservative Saudi Arabia, where King Abdullah's government moved this year to further open jobs and education for women and responded surprisingly leniently last week to the most significant protest in decades against the kingdom's ban on women driving, this summer is what amounts to hopeful times for supporters of greater freedom for Saudi women."
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