By Iqbal Tamimi

It seems that the Saudi media rhetoric regarding reform and claims of reconsidering women’s human rights are mere sedative promises. Women are still treated like minors and men are still seen as predators. Saudi daily  "Alwatan", said yesterday, 20 June 2012, that the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Saudi Arabia is considering a proposal to establish four industrial cities in Riyadh for women, and that the proposal has been submitted to Minister of Trade and Industry and awaiting his approval.

Most offices, banks, and universities in Saudi Arabia have separate entrances for men and women. According to law, there should be physically and visually separate sections for the sexes at all meetings including weddings and funerals. This segregation affected women and their rights, especially regarding training and learning opportunities, exchanging knowledge and skills with colleagues from the other gender, and the fact that there are hardly any Saudi women in top managerial and decision making posts.

In Saudi Arabia, even public transportation and public places such as beaches and amusement parks are segregated, sometimes by time, so that men and women attend at different hours. Violating the principles of sex segregation, known as khalwa, is punishable by law.

Alwatan daily quoted the Chairman of the National Industry Council of Saudi Chambers and Vice Chairman of the Riyadh Chamber, Mr Saad Almoajjel, as saying ‘creating those four industrial cities for women in four areas of Riyadh, is aiming at solving the problem of the high rate of unemployment among Saudi women’. According to 2009 data, the unemployment rate in Saudi Arabia, is more than 10 per cent, and 78 per cent of Saudi women university graduates are unemployed.

According to Saudi Industrial Property Authority regulations, factories for women require a different set of controls to approve their licenses. Those controls should guarantee total segregation and no mixing between men and women, during building the plant or after it starts running. The regulations require building high walls to block the vision between men and women. The design of the building should have barriers made in a manner that allows access to cars and vehicles used for loading and downloading - driven by men - into the factories, making sure at the same time that the men will not be able to have a glimpse of any woman. The women must be on the other side of the barrier when men download or upload.

The regulations demand strict security at gates, where only ‘very trust worthy men’ are employed to control and monitor the vehicles coming in and out, in addition to managing unforeseen emergencies and crises, such as if a fire broke.

Alwatan Daily explains the handling procedures in the new facilities "The gates between men drivers and the women working at the factories will be closed, the raw materials can be downloaded from the trucks after the drivers –men- enter the factories' premises, and until they finish downloading or uploading, women will be on the other side of the barrier to prevent mixing between them, and all communication needed is going to be made by phone".

It seems that one driver working for few minutes with a considerable number of women is considered like a Khalwah between one man and one woman in a private place. This does not make any sense, since at Pilgrimage millions of Muslim men and women gather annually since 14 centuries to pray at the same place and at the same time without any physical barriers between them.

The fact that men and women can communicate by phone raises some interesting debatable questions regarding which senses are considered more dangerous, and which has stronger effect regarding arousing sexual temptations between a man and a woman. It seems in this case, that seeing a woman is perceived as more 'dangerous' than hearing her. This perception contradicts the views of prominent Abbasid poet, Bashar Ben Burd, who is considered a reference on flirting poetry, wrote in his famous poem about a singer he loved her voice ‘The ear fall in love before the eye sometimes’.

In social life, segregation is part of the Saudi traditions. Most Saudi homes have one entrance for men and another for women and the private space is associated with women while the public space, such as the living rooms, is reserved for men. Traditional house designs use high walls, compartmentalized inner rooms, and curtains to protect the family and particularly women from the public.

Segregation is strict in restaurants, since eating requires removal of the veil. Most restaurants in Saudi Arabia have "family" and "bachelor" sections, the latter for men only, those who arrive without their wives, sisters, mothers, or daughters (whether married or not). Women have to sit in the family section always, but restaurants usually bar entrance to women who come without their husbands or Mahram (male relative such as a father or a brother or a son).

Western companies on Saudi land must comply with Saudi religious regulations. Fast-food restaurants such as McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and other US firms, for instance, maintain sex-segregated eating zones in their restaurants. The facilities in the women's section are usually lower in quality.

Exceptions to segregation rules and the number of mixed-gender workplaces have increased since King Abdullah was crowned, although they are still unusual. It has been claimed that several newspaper publishers have desegregated their offices. But the opening of the first co-educational university in 2009 caused an eruption the strongest debate over segregation.

Strangely enough, Sheikh Ahmad Qassim Al-Ghamdi, chief of the Makkah region’s Hai’a, told Saudi daily newspaper Okaz that segregation has no basis in Shariah, or Islamic law, and has been incorrectly applied in the Saudi judicial system. “Mixing was part of normal life for the Ummah and its societies,” Al-Ghamdi told Okaz.

There are contradictions that can’t be explained regarding segregation in Saudi society. Such as women have men drivers since women are banned from driving themselves. And many households have maids, who mix with the non-mahram men of the households, though maids, taxi drivers, and waiters tend to be foreigners, which is sometimes used as a justification or an excuse for lack of segregation when it suits them.

The considerable number of published news articles and reports of men and women caught in ‘Khalwa’ can be a good pointer, that segregation does not prevent men and women from meeting or communicating, even under the strictest rules and strict segregation is not the perfect policy claimed to protect women.