ISLAMABAD: Women carrying dry bushes for cooking purpose in the capital.
Monday 20 June 2011
Women at Work
LAHORE: A lady vendor roasting the grains for customers at her roadside setup for earn money.
Saudi Arabia's Prince Abdulaziz and Princess Fadwa in wedding ceremony
Saudi Arabia's Prince Mohamed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz and Princess Fadwa bint Khalid bin Abdullah bin Abdulrahman leave after the wedding ceremony in Westminster Abbey, in central London April 29, 2011.
lady worker busy in preparing clay made traditional oven (tandoor) at her workplace.
HYDERABAD: A lady worker busy in preparing clay made traditional oven (tandoor) at her workplace.
Most tattooed woman wins Guinness World Record
Julia Gnuse, who will be featured in the 2011 Guinness World Records, has spent more than £40,000 covering almost every inch of her 5ft 2 body with an array of brightly coloured tattoos.
From pictures of punk band the Sex Pistols to Disney characters, there’s hardly a slither of flesh that hasn’t been inked. Only her ears and feet remain their natural colour.
With 95 per cent of her skin covered and 400 tattoos in total, Julia has even earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most tattooed woman and the nickname The Illustrated Lady. But she also admits her passion has turned into something of an addiction.
Bizarrely, Julia, 53, started having tattoos in an attempt to hide a rare skin condition, which left her with ugly blisters. Doctors suggested flesh-coloured tattoos would cover the red scars. But when they failed to fully disguise the marks, she opted for traditional-coloured body art instead.
While the tattoos have detracted attention from Julia’s scars, her skin still erupts in painful blisters. But she says her mission has been worth every penny.“My skin still blisters, but I feel happier and my tattoos have made me more confident,” she says. “They cover the scars and enable me to have a better life.
“Now people stare at me because I am a walking canvas, and not because of some ugly blister. I feel more confident. People want to get to know me. They are fascinated by the tattoos.”
The former singer’s love affair with tattoos began when she was 35 and diagnosed with a rare and incurable skin condition known as porphyria. It causes her to blister when exposed to direct sunlight, and makes her very sensitive to certain fabrics as well as chemicals found in washing detergents.
“I developed it overnight,” says Julia. “It wasn’t just sunlight that affected me. My skin became so sensitive I couldn’t wear a bra as the chafing from the strap caused blisters. They were the size of a 50p piece and I’d sometimes have up to 50 at a time. And they were excruciating. If I knocked a part of my body they’d burst.
“The blisters made me feel unclean and ugly, and living in California, where every other woman is stunning, just made me feel worse. I felt very depressed and unattractive, and stayed indoors all the time. I could have moved somewhere less sunny but I hate cold, dark weather.”A dermatologist suggested to Julia that flesh-coloured tattoos would cover up the scars left by the blisters. Julia followed his advice and, while the needle didn’t irritate her skin or worsen the condition, the tattoos failed to hide the scars. It was then that Julia decided to try colourful designs instead.
She recalls: “I’d always thought tattoos looked tarty, but I was prepared to try it because I hated my scars so much. When I had the first tattoo, a five-inch octopus on my right calf in 1988, I was so scared my hands were shaking. It was painful, but I soon got used to it. And I loved the result so much I decided to have more.”
It was the start of an addiction for Julia, and she began paying almost weekly visits to a tattoo parlour in Los Angeles, California, with each tattoo taking a couple of hours at a time.
“I grew to love the feeling of the needle on my body,” she admits. “I was in the tattoo parlour once a week, looking at Julia’s favorite TV actress and comedian Lucille Ball features prominently on her back, while Elizabeth Perkins from the ’60s TV series Bewitched appears on her bottom.Peeking out from Julia’s breast is Bart Simpson, along with US comic Rodney Dangerfield. “Dangerfield can be rude and dirty, so being on my breast was quite appropriate,” she laughs.
“The only places I’ve kept bare are my feet and my eyes because I wanted to keep some places free of tattoos.”
Julia doesn’t work, so has funded her addiction using a generous family trust fund. But she says at first her family were shocked by her decision to get her body covered with tattoos.
“My parents and sister were pretty shocked, but they saw the tattoos as a creative outlet for me,” she says. “They have no worries about me spending the trust fund money on them. It is paid as an allowance and I can do what I want with it.”
And she insists she’s never encountered any prejudice because of how she looks. “Of course people stare and ask about the tattoos, that’s to be expected,” says Julia. “It’s something I’ve got used to. I don’t consider myself a freak, but a body of art.”
Julia’s currently dating, and says her boyfriend thinks her tattoos are great. “I’ve been with a guy called David for over a year, and we’re very happy. He doesn’t have any tattoos, but he does love the way I look.
“I like men who are interested in me as a person, and not what I look like. Some people will not go out with me because of what I look like, and it does take a strong man to be with me because I do attract attention. They have to be secure in themselves.”
Now Julia’s running out of space for tattoos, but if she does want to get a new design, she just has it over the top of an old one. But although Julia’s tattoos have helped her deal with the effect of her skin condition, they haven’t cured it. Sunlight still makes her blister, so when she ventures out she wears long-sleeved shirts and jeans and shields her face from the sun with a hat.
Bizarrely, having devoted so much time and money to her body art, Julia has now decided to have the bright blue tattoos on her face toned down.
Using a process known as dermabrasion, a specialist has removed the top layers of skin with a laser and in doing so has lightened the look.
“I just suddenly thought I might look a bit strange when I’m much older with a full face tattoo,” she says. “But I intend to keep the rest. They are my trademark after all – I’ll always be remembered for them.”
designs and deciding what I wanted on my body. I loved being stared at for my tattoos rather than my scars.”
Local Press: Saudi women and smoking
A recent report revealed that the number of smokers in Saudi Arabia has reached more than 6 million.
I find this number very strange, especially in an educated society that realizes the dangers of smoking, whether they are health, social or financial hazards.
What caught my attention in this high number is that out of these 6 million smokers, 1 million are women. This number is big and scary.
Besides the dangers, what is the woman smoker going to tell her children at home when they see her smoking as she is supposed to be a role model for them?
What is the smoking woman teacher going to tell her students at school when they find out that she smokes?
The gentle and beautiful women should not sully their lips with cigarettes. The gentle and beautiful women should not replace the smell of perfume on their bodies with the smell of smoke.
One million women smokers is indeed a dangerous number. The majority of them are young women.
This raises many questions. What are the reasons behind 1 million women smoking in a conservative Saudi society? Is it because of the lack of family supervision? Is it because of unemployment and plenty of free time? Is it because women are working outside home and not paying attention to the kids any more? Is it because women are searching for gender equality? Is it because they would like to imitate actors on TV? Or is it because of the Internet?
There are many questions that need to be answered by experts. This is a dangerous subject and we need a national project to fight smoking. We do not need useless seminars or distribution of brochures. We need to use modern ways to fight smoking.
Woman resumes testimony on Iraq rape allegations
A woman is set to continue her testimony on the sexual assault she says she suffered in Iraq at the hands of co-workers for Houston-based military contractor KBR Inc.
Monday will be the second day on the witness stand for Jamie Leigh Jones, who began her testimony Thursday in a federal court in Houston.
Jones says she was raped while working for KBR at Camp Hope in Baghdad in 2005. She's asking for unspecified damages from the Houston-based companies, which split in 2007.
She sued KBR, Houston-based former parent Halliburton Co. and a former KBR worker she alleges raped her. All deny Jones' allegations.
The Associated Press usually doesn't identify people alleging sexual assault, but Jones' face and name have been in media reports and on her own website.
Acid Attack Hoax: Why Did She Say Attacker Was Black?
Bethany Storro, the Portland woman who claimed that an unknown black woman threw acid in her face, yesterday admitted she'd made up the story.
What she can't explain is why she - an attractive woman with a new job - would cause herself horrific pain by searing her face, irreparably, with a substance as caustic as hydrochloric or sulfuric acid.
There could be several answers, says Dr. Samuelle Klein-Von Reiche, a psychologist in private practice in Manhattan.
"One theory is that it could be for the same reasons that some people cut themselves - to take charge of negative emotions, to feeling something more than numbness, to grant release from psychic pain," says Klein-Von Reiche.
Yet permanent disfigurement is extreme for those in the cutting category, isn't it?
Another theory, says Klein-Von Reiche, is that Storro views herself "as a victim and is reenacting some physical or psychological trauma."
But why did she tell police her assailant was black?
Klein-Von Reiche says that the fact that she said it was a black woman is "fascinating."
"Of course it could imply racial issues," she says, "But, she says, it might also have been her unconscious way of saying that she did it herself - black could represent the dark side of herself over which she has little control."
And there's another theory. Paradoxically, Bethany Storro could be a big narcissist.
"We shouldn't minimize the fact that she got enormous notoriety from this," says Klein-Von Reiche, and any sort of attention, positive or negative, is gold for an extreme narcissist.
"At its roots, narcissism is voracious."
Friday 17 June 2011
Bangladesh Acid Victims Fight For Justice
`The corrosive liquid badly burned my face and part of my child`s head`, said 30-year-old Khodeza.
Khodeza Begum still shivers in fear when she remembers the winter night eight years ago when an unidentified attacker sprayed acid on her and her baby girl as they slept in their Bangladesh shantytown home.
"The corrosive liquid badly burned my face and part of my child's head," said 30-year-old Khodeza, her face partly covered to hide the scars.
"But I received no justice from police or court as I could not identify the offender," she told a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the foundation of the Bangladesh Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF) in Dhaka on Tuesday.
ASF officials, police and victims said acid attacks mostly result from refusal of a sexual advance, demand for dowry or family disputes over land. Most of the victims were young women, they said.
As well as horrific scarring and the inevitable psychological trauma, organisers of the conference said that many victims are denied justice like Khodeza. Others face social isolation and ostracism by families.
"Lucky I am that my husband did not abandon us, unlike the fate that befall on many acid victims," said Khodeza, from Bangladesh's southern Satkhira district.
Police sometimes take the side of the offenders for a bribe and protect them from law, Nur Jahan, another acid victim, told the conference, which was attended by about 600 acid victims from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Cambodia, Uganda and Nepal.
Samina Afzal Naz, an official of the Acid Survivors Foundation Pakistan, said acid attacks over spurned sexual advances or land disputes were also a problem in her country.
"We started working in Pakistan only two years ago and have already identified 149 acid victims in the Punjab region," said Samina.
ASF officials said the number of acid attacks in Bangladesh had decreased since the government enacted tough laws that set death as the maximum penalty for acid throwers.
"When we founded ASF in Bangladesh in 1999, the number of acid victims annually recorded was around 500 in the country. The number has now gone down well below 100," said John Morrison, the founder of the organisation.
Access to good medical care for victims remains a problem, however, ASF officials said.
Bangladesh, home to nearly 150 million people, has only one 50-bed burns unit in a public sector hospital, they said.
"It is only a drop in the ocean," said Monira Rahman, the Executive Director of ASF Bangladesh, adding that the foundation is running a 20-bed hospital to supplement government facilities.
Coaches doing their job very well
Pakistan women’s cricket team captain, Sana Mir said on Thursday that she is very happy with her coaches adding that they are doing their job very well.
Mir contradicted a news item published in a section of the press saying that they were fully satisfied with their coaches.
“It is due to our hard work and devotion of our coaches that we won the first gold in the Asian Games last year,” she told APP on Thursday.
“It is due to our coaches that women’s cricket over the years has transformed into a specialised sport.
Sana, who was Player of the Tournament at the 2008 Women’s Cricket World Cup Qualifier, currently ranks 16th in the ICC Women’s ODI bowlers rankings.
Answering a question, Sana said that only those women can be good coaches who have played cricket themselves. Sana said that the central contracts awarded to them were a great achievement for women cricketers of the country.
“The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is having domestic competitions for women players on a regular basis and that is improving our standard,” Sana said.
Sana pointed out that the recently concluded Twenty20 Pentangular Women Cricket Tournament is a result of the PCB’s effort and commitment to the women’s game adding that women need encouragement and compensation for their hard work.
Saudi Women Called on to End Driving Ban
Saudi Organizers of a campaign to end Saudi Arabia’s ban on driving by females called on women in the kingdom who have international driving licenses to defy the prohibition by using their cars today.
The plan followed an online initiative that led to the detention of one of the campaign’s activists, Manal al-Sharif. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women from driving.
“Saudi Arabian authorities must stop treating women as second-citizens and open the kingdom’s roads to women drivers,” Amnesty International said yesterday in a statement. “Saudi Arabian authorities must not arrest licensed women who choose to drive, and must grant them the same driving privileges as men.”
A group of Saudi men and women, including al-Sharif, began organizing the campaign in May through the Facebook and Twitter social-networking websites. The organizers insisted their coordinated plan wasn’t a protest. Saudi Arabia, which has the world’s biggest oil reserves, has avoided the mass demonstrations that have toppled the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt and threaten the governments of Libya, Yemen and Syria.
Al-Sharif, a 32-year-old computer security consultant, was arrested last month in the city of al-Khobar, in Eastern Province, after she drove on more than one occasion and urged other women to drive in a video she posted on YouTube, according to Amnesty International. The human-rights organization said al- Sharif was forced to sign a pledge that she wouldn’t drive again and was released 10 days later.
“Since her arrest, several women have reportedly been arrested on various occasions for driving in different parts of Saudi Arabia and released shortly after signing pledges not to drive in future,” Amnesty said.
Saudi Arabia enforces restrictions interpreted from the Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam. A woman isn’t allowed to apply for a driver’s license, though some drive when they’re in desert areas away from cities. They can’t travel or get an education without male approval or mix with unrelated men in public places. They aren’t permitted to vote or run as candidates in municipal elections, the only balloting the kingdom allows.
The last time a group of women publicly defied the driving ban was on Nov. 6, 1990, when U.S. troops massed in Saudi Arabia to prepare for a war that would expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Saudi women were spurred by images of female U.S. soldiers driving in the desert and stories of Kuwaiti women driving their children to safety, and they were counting on the presence of the international media to ensure their story would reach the world and lessen the repercussions.
King Abdullah has taken steps this year to ensure that regional turmoil remains outside his borders, pledging almost $100 billion of spending on homes, jobs and benefits. He also has promised to improve the status of women. He opened the country’s first coeducational university in 2009 and appointed its first female deputy minister, Nora bint Abdullah al-Fayez, the same year. He has said he will provide more access to jobs for women, who make up about 15 percent of the workforce.
A change of policy in 2008 allowed women to stay in hotels without male guardians, and an amendment to the labor law allowed women to work in all fields “suitable to their nature.”
New York-based Human Rights Watch said in January that “reforms to date have involved largely symbolic steps to improve the visibility of women.”
New York-based Human Rights Watch said in January that “reforms to date have involved largely symbolic steps to improve the visibility of women.”
Pakistani man marries two women in one wedding
A Pakistani man's solution to the age-old dilemma of whether to embark on an arranged or a love marriage has captivated the country's media.
Television channels have provided live coverage of Azhar Haidri's decision to marry both women over a 24-hour period.
At first he refused to marry the woman selected by his family since childhood because he loved someone else.
Pakistani law allows polygamy because it interprets Islam to allow a man to have up to four wives.
Islam is the main religion in the country.
Men who take multiple wives usually do so after a period of several years - and must get approval from their first wife prior to a second marriage.
Correspondents say that while it is not unusual for men in Pakistan to have several wives, it is rare for two weddings to take place almost simultaneously under the full glare of the media.
'Lucky'Several Pakistani television stations have carried the nuptials live - on Sunday and Monday - because of the unique circumstances.
Mr Haidri's love for 21-year-old Rumana Aslam - ahead of 28-year-old Humaira Qasim - at one point threatened to split his family apart.
"I gave this offer that I will marry both of them," Mr Haidri, 23, told the Associated Press ahead of his first marriage to Ms Qasim on Sunday in the central Pakistani city of Multan. "Both the girls agreed."
He is scheduled to marry Ms Aslam on Monday.
Both women appear to have given their consent to the compromise and say they plan to live as sisters and friends.
"I am happy that we both love the same man," Ms Aslam told AP.
Mr Haidri, a herbal medicine practitioner, counts himself lucky.
"It is also very rare that two women are happily agreeing to marry one man," he said.
Wednesday 15 June 2011
GCC royals attend Prince William's wedding
Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Princess Ameerah exit following the marriage of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge at Westminster Abbey on April 29, 2011 in London, England. The marriage of the second in line to the British throne was led by the Archbishop of Canterbury and was attended by 1900 guests, including foreign Royal family members and heads of state.
Miss India 2011
Ankita Cheryl Ghazan beat 25 other contestants to win the Miss India Worldwide beauty pageant. The first runner-up was Miss India USA Natasha Arora, followed closely by Miss India Trinidad Anuradha Devika Priya
Sexual violence: most dangerous countries for women
Sexual violence: Congo * About 1,150 women are raped every day, or some 420,000 a year, according to a recent report in the American Journal of Public Health * The Congolese Women's Campaign Against Sexual Violence puts the number of rapes at 40 women a day.
Somalia women
Somalia: One of the poorest, most violent and lawless countries, Somalia ranked fifth due to a catalogue of dangers including high maternal mortality, rape, female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage * 95% of women face FGM, mostly between the ages of 4 and 11. * Only 9% of women give birth at a health facility * Only 7.5% of parliament seats are held by women.
women of pakistan
Pakistan: Those polled cited cultural, tribal and religious practices harmful to women, including acid attacks, child and forced marriage and punishment or retribution by stoning or other physical abuse.
World's most dangerous countries for women
Congo: Still reeling from a 1998-2003 war and accompanying humanitarian disaster that killed 5.4 million, Democratic Republic of Congo ranked second due mainly to staggering levels of sexual violence.
World's most dangerous countries for women
Afghanistan: Beleaguered by insurgency, corruption and dire poverty, Afghanistan ranked as most dangerous to women overall and came out worst in three of the poll's key risk categories: health, non-sexual violence and economic discrimination.
World's most dangerous countries for women
In its global perceptions survey, Thomson Reuters Foundation's legal news service, TrustLaw, asked 213 gender experts from five continents to rank countries by overall perceptions of danger as well as by six risks: health threats, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, cultural or religious factors, lack of access to resources and trafficking. Here are the results.
Picasso, Michelangelo masterpieces to go under hammer
Gainsborough's 'Portrait of Miss Read, later Mrs William Villebois' is displayed at the Masterpieces Exhibition at Christie's on June 13, 2011 in London, England. The painting, estimated at £4-6m, features in the exhibition, open to the public from 13th - 15th June 2011, which showcases some of the £250m worth of art for sale over the next four weeks. Artists including Michelangelo, Gainsborough, Goya, Stubbs, Monet, Picasso and Renoir are represented.
Miss India Worldwide crowned in Abu Dhabi
The Miss India Worldwide 2011 competition was held at the Emirates Palace Hotel
Meet Masdar Institute's first graduates
The students are graduating after completing the two-year graduate-level science and engineering degree programmes.
Tuesday 14 June 2011
Drug addiction grows among women in Pakistan
Drug abuse is nothing new, but Pakistan is facing a two-pronged problem.
First, addicts are getting hooked earlier. The mean age of initial heroin use, according to the last National Drug Abuse Survey (2002-03), has fallen to 22 from 26.
Second, more women are using and the country refuses to take seriously the social factors that contribute to this worsening picture.
Drug addiction can start in school. Girls at one private institution used hashish in the restroom while a reporter was there. A headmistress of one girls’ college in Lahore expelled a group of her students for possessing and using narcotics on the premises.
“The problem of drug addiction among women cannot be separated from other aspects of their social conditioning … such as racism, sexism and poverty … that are essential to understanding drug abuse in women”, said Tasneem Nazir, a clinical psychologist at Lahore’s Mayo Hospital. S
he said teenage girls are likely to abuse substances in order to lose weight, relieve stress or boredom, improve their mood, reduce sexual inhibitions, self-medicate depression and increase confidence. Women who seek treatment for alcohol and drug problems report a connection among domestic violence, childhood abuse, and substance abuse.
One woman said she had suffered from physical, mental and financial abuse before turning to drugs.
“I don’t know why I didn’t realise it”, the woman, 42, said of her addiction, but “I didn’t deserve what my husband put me through”.
Nazir said that to declare addiction openly is to sign a social death warrant.
“Many addicted women refuse to go into drug rehabilitation programmes. They are outpatients because of the shame and stigma attached to substance dependence and addiction. They cannot stay in rehabilitation centres for cultural reasons and go only for medicine and advice”, said Dr. Mahmooda Aftab, a clinical psychologist running a rehabilitation centre.
Nazir suggested that the way to remedy the problem is to address violence and sexual abuse, unsafe housing, unemployment, stereotyping of sexual roles, and the lack of health care and child care, all of which contribute to the depression and hopelessness linked to substance abuse by women.
Brig. Sajjad Ahmed Bakshi, force commander of the Anti Narcotics Force (ANF), Punjab, told Central Asia Online that though information on women’s drug use is limited, drug addiction has increased steadily among girls and women.
“The youth of today are a pathetic sight", he said. "Greater attention is being paid to create awareness among the people about the dangers of drug abuse and the ways to avoid it”.
Bakshi said women, especially young girls belonging to “elite backgrounds”, are becoming addicts.
Some women are not aware of the drugs they are taking. Doctors prescribe a “medicine”, and some incurious users know little about the side effects.
“There is no restriction on buying (painkillers or tranquilisers)”, he said.
Many women have been taking such medicines for months or years and have become dependent on them.
“We came to the doctor for treatment. The doctor prescribed these medicines, which I used to sleep well and to ward off worries”, said Hajra, a rehabilitation centre patient whose name was changed to ensure privacy. “I didn't know the medicines used prescribed by the doctor are poison”.
Bakshi said the ANF has established wards at eight government hospitals to provide free treatment. But most patients don’t know where they can get help, either before or after the addiction takes hold.
“It is important for women to have the knowledge and skills to be a positive force in confronting this problem, especially in drug prevention”, Bakshi said. “It is an imperative of this time that all sections of society combine their efforts to eradicate drugs from our society”.
He suggested that for complete eradication, systematic education and constant community support need to exist.
“It is essential to … implement awareness programmes effectively and intelligently", he said. "Doing so would lead to a better and (more) prosperous future for each member of the society”.
Society’s view on addiction also needs to change, according to concerned observers.
“The barriers to treatment for women must be addressed because most programmes are based on male-oriented models that are not geared to the needs of women", Mahmooda said. "The need of the time is programmes must be designed to overcome the current barriers to women’s access to and participation in treatment”.
Men out of Saudi women's clothing shops
or Fatma Qaroub, a 28-year-old personal trainer from the Saudi commercial capital of Jedda, buying lingerie has been an embarrassing affair. Every time she went shopping, she would encounter male vendors who would ask her about her measurements, her preferred style and whether she was married or single. Qaroub was fed-up. So she started a Facebook page titled "Enough embarrassment," which quickly garnered 11,000 supporters. Other women initiated campaigns to boycott Saudi women's clothing shops that employed men only.It seems that the pressure has finally borne fruit. King Abdullah issued a list of decrees pertaining to employment in the kingdom a week ago. Among them, an order to "feminize" women's clothing shops in Saudi Arabia within the month. Males employees are out and, because the sexes are forbidden to mix at the workplace, they will be replaced by women. "This is a very important decision for women," Qaroub told The Media Line. "Female unemployment was the main reason for my campaign, but also the unnecessaryshame women face.An-ultra conservative kingdom governed by the orthodox Wahhabi stream of Sunni Islam, Saudi Arabia imposes strict gender segregation in the public sphere. But the kingdom is also under pressure to create jobs for Saudis, especially for women who are increasingly educated and demanding opportunities outside their traditional place in the home.
Even as rising oil prices and production are fueling strong economic growth, unemployment is over 10 percent. Last month, Labor Minister Adel said companies would be able to keep an expatriate employee on their payrolls for no more than six years and that some businesses might lose the right to hire foreigners altogether. In 2005, when the pressure to "Saudize" the labor market was less intense, the Labor Ministry gently requested lingerie shops to replace male salesmen with women. But the decision was never implemented.While women work as doctors and journalists and in business, retailing is considered to be especially sensitive because it is difficult to segregate male and female shoppers. The Saudi-owned daily Al-Hayat reported that 15 female cashiers were re-hired this month in the Carrefour shopping center in eastern city of Al-Khabar, nine months after the Labor Ministry forced them to quit. The solution was to create a sex-segregated checkout line. "We won't allow [gender] mixing," a Carrefour employee assured viewer on the Arab satellite channel Al-Arabiya. "Families will be serviced by female cashiers whereas single men will work with male cashiers.
Qaroub said that due to the wide media coverage her campaign received, she has found that men have become more supportive of "feminization" than women because they now realize the humiliation their wives suffered. Women's organizations in Saudi Arabia estimated that as the decision is implemented, as many as 5,000 jobs will immediately become available. But Saudi businessman Fawwaz Al-Hakir was much more optimistic, telling Al-Arabiya that as many as 500,000 jobs for women would materialize within three ye
ars. He said more positions would be needed as women begin frequenting clothing shops without embarrassment.
But Eman Al-Nafjan, a Riyadh-based blogger and feminist activist, questioned the new decision, saying the devil was in the details. "It's not very clear how they will implement the decision in one month's time," Al-Nafjan told The Media Line. "Even people who are supportive of the decisions have many questions." Al-Nafjan said women are only employed in "women only" malls, which exist throughout the kingdom, but are of lesser quality than regular malls. She said the short time slot for implementation outli
ned in the decree was unrealistic. "Today, women mostly work in the education, health and banking sectors. Saudi women don't know how to work in shops," she said. "Will all the current salesmen be fired?
The decision was framed by the government as an employment issue, not a women's rights one. Al-Nafjan admitted that the decision contributed in bettering the skewed Saudi labor market. She said that during a recent visit to a mall, she was pained to encounter a female college graduate working as a security guard at the entrance to a fitting room in a clothing shop, while expatriate male vendors manned the cashiers.
I have nothing against foreign workers, but why are we importing expats when we have all these women who are desperate for a job?" Al-Nafjan said she believed between 85-90 percent of sales clerks in Saudi shops were foreign. Following the royal decision, Qaroub said she would abandon her "Enough Embarrassment" Facebook campaign, substituting it with a new campaign titled "The Embarrassment is Over." The new campaign will focus on the need for training women to work as shop vendors. - Media Line
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