One of the irony's of Saudi Arabia's gender segregation is the way in which women shop for lingerie - uncomfortably and inappropriately.As a result of labor policies aimed at preventing women from dealing with male customers, women are not employed as salespeople. This means that in lingerie stores men end up talking to women about bras/thongs/etc and checking out their bodies to determine cup sizes. On top of that, fitting rooms are banned in the kingdom, since women undressing in the close vicinity of a man is unacceptable.
Not only does this not make sense in ANY way when you consider the conservative nature of Saudi society, (in a gender-segregated society, why would men not be banned from lingerie stores?), but even in the US and Europe, men typically do not sell lingerie to women. Well, as they say in the Arab-world, HALAS! Enough!
A group of Saudi women have launched a boycott of lingerie stores until they employ women. The women are not asking to work WITH men. Far from it - they are not demanding any major shifts in Saudi culture - in fact, they are supporting it. They don't want men to be involved in this type of intimate purchase at all. They want men completely removed from the process, as you would think conservative leaders would agree with.
The boycott was launched on Tuesday by approximately 50 women who gathered at the Al-Bidaya Breast-feeding Resource and Women's Awareness Center in Jeddah, run by founder Modia Batterjee. The aim of the boycott is to pressure the government to IMPLEMENT a law that has been in existence since 2006, which mandates that only women can be employed in women's clothing stores. Reem Assad, a finance professor at Dar Al Hekma College in Jeddah says: "We are raising awareness and calling for the implementation of the law." Assad started a Facebook group which now has 1,680 members, and posted an online petition which has at this point been signed by 1,700 people.
Since only a few Saudi papers have written about the boycott, it has depended largely on word-of-mouth and the internet. The women who launched this campaign knew how to leverage online communications and social media to disseminate their message quickly and effectively. The impact of the campaign remains to be seen, but I am curious to see how else Saudis will chose to utilize new and social media to initiate these types of activities in the Kingdom.
The boycott was launched on Tuesday by approximately 50 women who gathered at the Al-Bidaya Breast-feeding Resource and Women's Awareness Center in Jeddah, run by founder Modia Batterjee. The aim of the boycott is to pressure the government to IMPLEMENT a law that has been in existence since 2006, which mandates that only women can be employed in women's clothing stores. Reem Assad, a finance professor at Dar Al Hekma College in Jeddah says: "We are raising awareness and calling for the implementation of the law." Assad started a Facebook group which now has 1,680 members, and posted an online petition which has at this point been signed by 1,700 people.
Since only a few Saudi papers have written about the boycott, it has depended largely on word-of-mouth and the internet. The women who launched this campaign knew how to leverage online communications and social media to disseminate their message quickly and effectively. The impact of the campaign remains to be seen, but I am curious to see how else Saudis will chose to utilize new and social media to initiate these types of activities in the Kingdom.
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