First floor: Ladies lingerie -- and male sales clerks

In Saudi Arabia, except for a few renegades, lingerie is sold to women by male sales clerks. And the sales clerks are not from Saudi Arabia. The Emirate Economist has covered this story for several years; the posts can be found under the lingerie label.

Here, is the latest report from the BBC:

Reem Asaad, an economics professor from Jeddah, organised the boycott through her Facebook page, as public protests are illegal in Saudi Arabia.
...
Parts of Saudi society are still very traditional and do not like the idea of women working - even if they are just selling underwear to each other.

Because of the strict segregation laws barring physical contact between the sexes, women also cannot be properly measured for their underwear.

Other reports:

Saudi women to boycott lingerie shops with male staff
AFP - ‎JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi women angry at being forced to buy intimate clothes from male sales clerks were urged on Saturday to begin a two-week boycott ...

Saudi campaign against 'manned' lingerie shops - paper
ArabianBusiness.com - ‎BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN: The campaigners expect a minimum of 40000 women participating in the boycott. A fresh ...

'Manned' lingerie shops targeted
Arab News - Abdul Ghafour I - ‎Feb 12, 2010‎
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 ...

The Takeaway interviewed Professor Asaad. So does the BBC. Rana Jad is a 20-year-old student at Dar al-Hikma Women's College, and one of Reem Asaad's finance students:

"Girls don't feel very comfortable when males are selling them lingerie, telling them what size they need, and saying 'I think this is small on you, I think this is large on you'. He's totally checking the girls out!"

Marks & Spencer had it right the first time

Why should smaller ladies pay the same as larger ladies when larger bras cost more to make? That's what Marks & Spencer thought when it ended its uniform pricing practice. But then larger ladies complained. The result?

An M&S spokesman announced: “We’ve heard what our customers are telling us — that they are unhappy with the pricing on our DD-plus bras and that basically we’ve boobed.

“So from tomorrow, no matter what size you buy, the price will be the same.

Read it all here.

I'm waiting for the smaller ladies to complain that M&S is not giving them enough support.

Thanks to Harlette for the pointer.

Men STILL working in women's lingerie in Saudi Arabia

And women still aren't.

HuffPo:

Reem Asaad finds it annoying to buy her bras and panties from a man. But she doesn't have much choice in the matter. Although Saudi Arabia has the strictest gender segregation in the world, only men are hired as sales staff in most retail stores. "We have men selling g-strings in stores to women which doesn't happen anywhere in the world," said Asaad.

But the 37-year-old professor of finance and banking is even more frustrated that a three-year-old regulation permitting female sales clerks has not been implemented.
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One 21-year-old Saudi man who works in a lingerie chain called "Women's Secret" is too embarrassed to tell his friends. "I swear before I took this job, I never even went into these stores with my sisters and family because I was too embarrassed and now I work in one," he said.
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Salahuddin Younus, who works in the lingerie section of Debenhems, a large department store, said that after a year and a half, he has gotten used to dealing with customers, most of whom cover themselves head to toe, including their faces. "Some customers say, 'My breast is going down. I need to push up,'" said the salesman, who is from Bangladesh, grabbing a push-up bra from a rack.

For previous Emirates Economist coverage of this lingerie issue on the Arab peninsula just click the lingeria label at the end of the post.

Salesmen only in lingerie shops

Strange, but true. In Saudi Arabia women it is illegal for women to buy lingerie from women.

Arab News reports

All over the world, one finds saleswomen at lingerie shops. In our country — where officials are trying to introduce regulations granting women their rights — women are prohibited from working in lingerie shops. I wish this would change.

Women are not at ease with salesmen at lingerie shops. Women do not have privacy when they are out shopping, they deal cautiously and hesitantly with strange men who try selling them underwear and evening clothes. This is especially the case when they look for a particular size or a certain shape, color or material.

The issue of saleswomen working in lingerie shops has become a crucial one. The Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Commerce must work quickly to solve this problem. Having an all women lingerie boutique inside shopping centers would not be as awkward as asking a strange man for your underwear size.

This is an on-going saga. Click on the label "lingerie" below to see.

Bans on heads on mannequins and salesmen of ladies undergarments

Sharjah is cracking the whip on ladies garment shops.

Mannequins in Sharjah shops should be headless and only model “decent” clothing, a Sharjah Municipality circular has stated.

Gulf News interviewed Khalid Al Jaberi, head of market control at Sharjah Municipality:

“We reinforced the ban because it was a religious issue that raised many complaints from residents, who were against shops displaying men and women’s undergarments on realistic mannequins,” said Al Jaberi.

He said no fines had been imposed on shops because everyone had adhered to the circular.

Sharjah Municipality originally implemented the ban five years ago following a fatwa issued by the Islamic Affairs Department.

However, the ban has been reinforced because several outlets had stopped abiding by the rule. [seems to contradict earlier paragraph]

The municipality has always been keen on conserving the traditional Islamic values of Sharjah and has already implemented several rules, including the ban on men selling women’s undergarments in shops.

When I first arrived in Sharjah in the Spring of 2002 I visited the Sharjah Art Museum -- I highly recommend it. It had an exhibit of modern art. I was struck most by the mannequin in an abaya with red finger nails and red handcuffs on her wrists. Without thinking about rules I pulled out my camera and out of nowhere stepped a guard who sterning indicated no photos allowed.

Here's my post on the ban of men showing ladies undergarments from March 2007.

Sharjah bans men working in women's lingerie :: Gulf News

Quote:

Men are not allowed to sell lingerie in Sharjah and shops have been advised that only women should be hired for this sales position, the Sharjah Economic Development Department said. It has already shut down 10 shops for flouting the rule.
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The ruling follows similar laws in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The Kingdom's labour ministry had said earlier that it will help create jobs for women.
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Al Mahmoud added that the rule must be strictly adhered to, because it is a matter of morals which should be followed in our traditional society. "We will put an awareness plan into action and will intensify the campaign against male employees from selling women's garments," he said.

[GN supplies this image.]

The sands are shifting on the matter of morals. Traditionally, women could not work in shops. Women in Saudi Arabia had to fight for the right to buy lingerie from saleswomen -- the moral police barred women from working in shops.

It is not clear whether women were barred from working in shops in the UAE. If they were not, then the inference an economist would make is that shoppers either preferred to be served by men (unlikely) or that they were not willing to pay the higher prices shops would have to charge to cover the higher wages women receive.

I observe that in Dubai there are lingerie shops that where the sales staff is 100% female and others where it is 100% male. Customers have a choice between them. In the US, I don't think I've ever seen a male salesperson selling lingerie to women. It would be considered rather kinky.

No Turning Back on Saleswomen Directive, Says Saudi Labor Minister :: Arab News
Saudi salesmen watch their backside

From the Kingdom we receive this uplifting news:

“Providing jobs for women has been a priority for decision makers in the Kingdom for more than 25 years,” he told reporters during his visit to the technical college along with Britain’s Prince Charles.

The labor minister denied that there were as many as two million Saudi men working as salesmen in female-clothing shops. “This figure is baseless. If there were two million Saudis working as salesmen in (shops selling products for women) we would not require five million foreigners who come from abroad to work as salesmen,” he said.

Al-Gosaibi also reassured Saudi salesmen already working female-clothing stores that they would not lose their jobs due to the implementation of the directive. He said that even if it were proven that the directive adversely affected a Saudi salesman, another job would be found for him.

Al-Gosaibi did not address this issue in relation to how it might affect expatriate sales clerks. He did emphasize the need to open the job market to Saudi women.

“There are large numbers of women who are in desperate need of jobs within the appropriate environment, which we seek to provide following Shariah regulations,” he said.

Millions? Time for a journalistic reality check. Mariam Al Hakeem reporting in Gulf News puts the figures in the thousands.

An ill-informed Westerner would assume that modesty would have long ago made lingerie sales a female-dominated profession as much in the Kingdom as it would be in the West. It strikes a Westerner as paradoxical in the extreme that the logic of protection of females could have ever have meant that a Saudi woman could only buy underwear from a man.

I have to assume the percentage of Saudi women wearing ill-fitting brassieres exceeds the conspiratorial 70% rate seen in the West.

The distribution of talents across the men and women is not all that different except (warning: Larry Summersesque statement ahead) in the tails. The Kingdom is now letting women into certain professions. But squeezing them into only certain professions clearly means many will end up in ill-fitting jobs that waste their talents. Is that a cost worth paying; or does Sharia (as interpreted in the Kingdom) make that an irrelevant and impertinent question?

TAGS: lingerie, Saudi, female dominated occupations

Saudi lingerie shops to employ only women :: Arab News

An Unmentionable Problem for Women :: Arab News

This phenomenon has always bemused me no end.

In Dubai, you have your choice. If you are a woman, and you want to buy your unmentionables from a man (usual, a man from India) you can do so, but you don't have to. Evidently, there are enough women in Dubai with these preferences to keep these kinds of stores in business.

In Saudi Arabia, you don't have a choice. The only women's lingerie stores allowed are those staffed solely by men. I imagine there are a lot women in the Kingdom whose trip to the lingerie shop leaves them uncomfortable, in more ways than one.