Website review: The gulf that separates the sexes i...
sc74 discovered this in Middle East
•2 reviews since May 13, 2008
middle-east
•iht.com/articles/2008/05/12/mideast/saudi.php
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sc74 discovered 8 weeks ago- From the page: "A cellphone picture of Alia's fiancé - a 25-year-old military man named Badr - was passed around, and the girls began pestering Alia for the details of her showfa. A showfa - literally, a "viewing" - usually occurs on the day a Saudi girl becomes engaged. When he comes to ask her father for her hand in marriage, a girl's suitor has the right to see her wearing normal clothes, without her abaya. In some families, he may have a supervised conversation with her. Ideally, many Saudis say, her showfa will be the only time in a girl's life that she is seen this way by a man outside her family. The separation between the sexes in Saudi Arabia is so extreme that it is difficult to overstate. Saudi women may not drive, and they must wear floor-length black abayas and head coverings in public at all times. They are driven around in cars with tinted windows, attend girls-only schools and university departments and eat in "family" sections of cafés and restaurants, which are partitioned off from sections used by single male diners. Women-only gyms, women-only boutiques and travel agencies, even a women-only shopping mall, have been established in Riyadh in recent years to serve women who did not previously have access to such places unless they were chaperoned by a male relative."
