Women and men are kept apart in Saudi Arabia, but that doesn't stop women from playing a key role in the marketplace. In cosmopolitan cities like Riyadh women-only gyms, women-only boutiques and travel agencies, even a women-only shopping mall, are sprouting up in recent years to serve women who did not previously have access to such places unless they were chaperoned by a male relative.
Technology allows some subtle interaction between the sexes:
"A woman can’t switch her phone’s Bluetooth feature on in a public place without receiving a barrage of the love poems and photos of flowers and small children which many Saudi men keep stored on their phones for purposes of flirtation. And last year, Al Arabiya television reported that some young Saudis have started buying special “electronic belts,” which use Bluetooth technology to discreetly beam the wearer’s cellphone number and e-mail address at passing members of the opposite sex."
Young Saudi females confessed in an interview that chatting with a boy online is not as disgraceful for their family as talking with a boy, but chatting and even connecting with boys on social networking sites like Facebook is controversial and generally avoided.
Despite all these restraints, the women say they long for the kind of love they read about in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
Women and men are kept apart in Saudi Arabia, but that doesn't stop women from playing a key role in the marketplace. In cosmopolitan cities like Riyadh women-only gyms, women-only boutiques and travel agencies, even a women-only shopping mall, are sprouting up in recent years to serve women who did not previously have access to such places unless they were chaperoned by a male relative.
Technology allows some subtle interaction between the sexes:
"A woman can’t switch her phone’s Bluetooth feature on in a public place without receiving a barrage of the love poems and photos of flowers and small children which many Saudi men keep stored on their phones for purposes of flirtation. And last year, Al Arabiya television reported that some young Saudis have started buying special “electronic belts,” which use Bluetooth technology to discreetly beam the wearer’s cellphone number and e-mail address at passing members of the opposite sex."
Young Saudi females confessed in an interview that chatting with a boy online is not as disgraceful for their family as talking with a boy, but chatting and even connecting with boys on social networking sites like Facebook is controversial and generally avoided.
Despite all these restraints, the women say they long for the kind of love they read about in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.