Badtz, you spurred me to go and ask some of my employees what the rules were on this. From what I understand when a female is perceived to no longer be a girl, but starts to look like a woman, then she should start to cover up. Breast development, periods, other typical puberty signs are the indications. There doesn’t seem to be a set age.
A woman’s hair, her hands, and down to the tops of her feet should be covered. But here is where it gets a little vague. The purpose of the covering is to make a woman inconspicuous. One of the guys relates to a sermon(?) in his mosque where he was told that if his wife had her face covered* while most other women did not then she should uncover her face as they are doing. Otherwise, she would be drawing attention to herself.
Apparently, the rules are flexible enough that the consensus I got from the people here** was that if the person who had made the rules originally had known how the modern world would be then they would have allowed a women to do whatever was required to blend in and not call attention to herself.
I brought to their attention the article in question about the 11-year-old girl wearing her hijab into the classroom. Funny enough, one guy said that in the US their federal law allowed this (Hehe, he probably knows the law in the US better than the typical Americans does!) I explained the situation as to why hats, etc were not allowed in that school. The response was very interesting.
“That is just politics. Someone is trying something”, “An 11 year old girl? She doesn’t need to do that (as in wear a hijab)”, most telling of all and was the statement that this violated the very purpose of the rule in the first place which was to not call attention to women in your family. A Muslim would not have allowed his children to be placed in front of the press like that was the consensus.
From what I learned here it seems that a person who wanted to challenge the schools rule would be in a bit of a quandary. I want to wear my headdress because my religion requires me to do so. In order to do this I must call attention to myself, which is the opposite of why I am required to wear the headdress in the first place.
Also, by wearing the hijab when no one else does makes me more noticeable. Which goes back to the sermon my guys received in the mosque about uncovering the face if others are doing so.
Damn, I’m glad I’m an atheist and not a Muslim trying to come to terms with the modern world.
*Full body coverings are the norm for women in Yemen. In Sana’a, the capitol, it is less strict, while Aden is still pretty liberal.
**Admittedly a small sample of 3 Yemenis. They are better educated than their fellow countrymen, all having Bachelor degrees. All of them have taken their education outside of Yemen.