Istara|: interesting, I thought the S.Q was a male item only.
I wouldn’t do that.
Yes I know, btw, urdu uses the Farsi modification to Arabic script, plus some of its own features. Frankly I have a hard time reading it.
Istara, also on the SA girl, you’ve hit it spot on. She’s got little to judge mixed non-family situations on, and is no doubt reveling in the charge she gets from the current situation. BTW, the stuff she’s wearing is more or less the stuff many will wear under the Abaya, although you do get it elsewhere. I have a fine memory of running into some Emirati girls on vac in Egypt, at the Marriot. They had the mech abayas and those funny emirate masque nigabat. A fine little visual I must say.
Collounsbury - Just out of curiosity, why would you not recommend that a Westerner not wear a salwar suit (for casual wear, not business)? Since so many Indian and Pakistani expat women wear them, it’s not a matter of immodesty, I suppose. What misperception do you think would come into play?
Bec. of tensions btw Arabs and Sub-Cont. folks in the Gulf, and outside the Gulf you just look like a fool, not a done thing. You can of course, but it’s not very much different from wearing s.q. around Middle America.
sunfish - I think that a western woman in Dubai could almost certainly wear a salwar suit without causing offence. As long as it hadn’t been modified (eg low cut in front, v tight or something) it would be OK.
At worst, she might get a few odd looks, and it’s possible some Indian and Pakistani ladies might feel resentful, but generally, I think it would be OK. I know a German girl who wore a sari to a birthday party of an Indian friend, Indian colleagues at her work were really helpful in dressing her up in it. If you wear the clothes with respect, then some Indians will feel honoured by it.
There are now many western women’s clothes that contain elements very similar to the salwar - longer tunic-style tops over matching trousers, etc. Then you have Jemima Khan who I believe makes a range of haute couture salwar type outfits for western and Pakistani women alike.
But even in the west, women usually have greater freedom of dress (in terms of social acceptability) than men. So I am not sure how a western man would fare wearing a (men’s) salwar over here.
Simulpost - but I don’t specifically disagree with Coll - there’s a difference between looking foolish, and actually causing offence.
If I wore a salwar to the local supermarket, I would look like somewhat of an oddity. But I wouldn’t get arrested, and people probably wouldn’t be angry or anything.
Also: you do see western women wearing hijabs and abayas. (Black headscarf and black cloak-coat). These are women who have married Emirati men, and chosen to convert and conform to national dress. It’s rather odd the first few times you see a pale white face and blue eyes beneath a hijab - you do a double take - but you get used to it.
First, Dubai is rather different from the rest of the area. The high % of independent Sub-con folks drives that. Woman or man wearing a s.q. around Cairo, Amman or Damascus is dressed like a circus freak.
Second, generally if you are just visiting the region and not a local lang. speaker, people find it a bit irritating and/or amusing when you wear traditional garb. I can do it, I speak the lang. fluently and I can hang with the brothers. I rather prefer wearing a Qandara to cafe and chilling, but frankly if you’re just visiting, wearing such garb as a Westerner has more potential to annoy or to make you look slightly ridiculous than anything else.
For all that I do not wish to imply anyone is gonig to get seriously bent out of shape, but the potential for not offence but mild irritation is there.
Boy, this has been a very interesting thread. By the way, can women own businesses in Saudi Arabia? I would imagine that the woman would have to turn over her earnings to her husband. If a Saudi woman was able to own a business, would it be one that only females would use, such as a beauty salon, clothing boutique, cosmetics boutique, etc.? Thanks for your answers. I hope I’m not being a pest.
Regarding wearing local garb: The US military, when visiting UAE, are prohibited by service regulations from wearing the local garb. The required mode of dress is conservative, tasteful clothing that covers the legs and, for women, also covers the arms. Shirts with printed material on them were also prohibited.
In Sharjah, UAE, men would also have to cover their arms. You could probably get away with a short sleeved shirt, but really a long sleeved one - if rolled up to the elbows a bit - would be more appropriate.
Neither gender in Sharjah should wear shorts or skirts above the knee. Neither should reveal bare chest.
Yes of course, it’s Quranicaly enjoined that women can own and run businesses. Khadija, Muhammed’s first wife was a major business woman of the day.
As a matter of legal theory…theory being an operative word, Islamic rules for women and ownership were and are fairly decent as compared with most global traditions until European emancipation in the past 150 years or so.
How common that is and practical is another matter. One more of Saudi male chauvanism than actual religious injunction.
Why would you imagine that? As a matter of Sharia law, women have right to their procedes. Further there are rules about how much support the wife has to get from the husband, regardless of her own financial position. Again, legally speaking not a bad deal as unlike in Xian traditions, Sharia holds women’s accounts are in fact their own property.
However, reality and theory are not always in accord, and social pressures and custom frequently violate both the spirit and text of the law.
No, not at all. Running the business is another issue, obviously as direct contact with men not of the family is rather frowned upon at best.
Theoretically, then (and I know this is ONLY theoretically), a Saudi woman could own a business, and she could operate it too, if her only contacts outside the home were entirely with other women? So you could (again, theoretically) have an entire “second economy” run entirely by women: women’s banks, stores, shippers, buyers, and so on? Sounds like a radical feminist’s nirvana – no contact with those nasty male types. <wink> Except for the clothing restrictions, of course.
Please pardon my ignorance if this has been answered before, but do women in Saudi have any difficulty in getting medical care because of the “no contact with non-family men” restriction? Is there an exemption for doctors, or are there enough women in te medical profession so that this is not an issue? I have been led to believe that in some fundamentalist locales women are permitted to die rather than to be seen and treated by a male doctor.
Family members, not just women. Insofar as the region’s businesses are largley family held this is not quite the hurdle it first seems.
Well, if it’s just women, then there are not many clothing restrictions. As you put it, if we are to abstract away from certain things, it could indeed be feminist nirvana. Indeed the covering up around men might not be outside that either.
Well the dying part is believable perhaps in Afghanistan, but then medical care is highly theoretical there to begin with.
There are women doctors and further the Quran is quite explicit that saving lives comes ahead of modesty and so forth. There was a scandal regarding a fire in a girls school where the religious police were accused by Saudis themselves of forgetting this and not letting girls flee. Whatever the reality of the event, it’s clearly not acceptable to let women die for modesty reasons alone, as a general social matter. Nutcases of course are found everywhere.
For all the above, SA badly restricts women’s participation in economic activities as much by social mores as law, and only for wealthy women are these comments really most fully operative on.
Some of the work going on if Afghanistan is developing business opportunities for women, esp. widows and girl orphans. A lot of them set up cooperatives run entirely by women, but with a male frontman to do business with the outside world such as disributors and financiers.
In other parts of the country these frontmen are not necessary and in a couple of places women have been working as wage laborers in such traditionally male dominated fields as construction.
So in just one conservative country, there are huge variances in acceptable norms.
Thanks, Collounsbury. I can see how that would be the case.
Long after it was legal for women to go to school here in the U.S. (and I imagine lots of other places, too) it was apparently darn tough for a woman to actually become a doctor or other professional, for social reasons.
I had read about that fire, also. So it was considered a “scandal” locally? That I didn’t know.
I really appreciate all the factual information I get from people like you and places like this; there is often a lot of missing and misleading information IRL. !
Thanks Collounsbury for clearing up some misconceptions. I fully realize that American women have not always had the rights that I enjoy today and I’m sorry if I gave the impression that I thought that women in Saudi were not treated well at all. However, your last comment,
Could you explain how women from less wealthy, less powerful families are treated in Saudi? Is their day to day routine more or less regimented and controlled?
Eva Luna, I would really discourage you from visiting Iran. At present, a Western woman can get away with a chador and a long rain coat and no make up, no nail varnish, etc, but from a Jewish background, with a US Passport, you’ve got no chance in hell of visiting Iran safely.
Sadly, I have to get another passport from an EU country in order to visit safely myself. That is, if the US doesn’t start bombing Iran into the stone age on the grounds that it is a member of the dreaded ‘axis of evil.’
Although it’s five years old, this article from The Christian Science Monitor says that there are 23 synagogues in Tehran, a Jew is a member of the Iranian Parliament, and that the 40,000 Jews in Iran are the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel.
