JEDDAH: The second phase of a yearlong campaign to get rid of men who work as sales clerks in lingerie shops has commenced with activists calling for a two-week boycott of such shops starting on Saturday.
The move comes four years after the Labor Ministry had announced an initiative to employ women in these shops. Since the announcement was made in 2005, nothing has been done, boycott organizers have said. For their part, lingerie shop owners have viewed the ministry’s decision as optional and the ministry has denied the initiative was canceled or postponed.
“If you really care about women’s rights and you are in Saudi Arabia, then starting from the 13th of February 2010 and for two weeks boycott all lingerie shops that employ men,” the campaigners said in a statement published in Al-Madinah newspaper, adding that they hopes to see at least 40,000 women participating in the boycott. “The contradiction is in the fact that we are supposedly the most conservative nation in the world and yet women here divulge their bra and undie sizes and colors to strange men on a regular basis.”
Eman Al Nafjan, who manages “Saudiwoman’s Weblog,” wrote in a recent journal entry that “common decency and personal comfort dictate” that women would rather buy their underwear from other women.
Islamic scholars like Ghazi Al-Shammari have endorsed the boycott. “I am sure that most women do not feel comfortable purchasing their lingerie from shops that are run by men,” the scholar said, urging businessmen to follow the direction of the Labor Ministry and replace male sales clerks with women.
The campaign to get the Labor Ministry’s decision implemented was officially started in February 2009 by Reem Asaad, a Saudi lecturer at a college in Jeddah. Asaad and others sent letters to local lingerie shops demanding they institute the Labor Ministry’s decision. “I am happy that some lingerie shops have already employed women. They include Nawomy and Change. We should support these shops by purchasing things from them,” she wrote on an online Arabic forum.
The previous campaign received the support of Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI), which provided the organizers with lists of the heads of the Kingdom’s top five lingerie stores. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has said that it was not against the idea of saleswomen in lingerie shops as long as they work in women-only malls.
Al-Madinah reported that the market for women’s intimate apparel represents 17 percent of the SR9 billion ($2.3 billion) Saudi women’s clothing market.
