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Women in Saudi Arabia


Women in Saudi Arabia

Women, be they local or foreign, are all required to wear an abaya, a long and loose black robe. While a headscarf is optional for non-Saudi females (particularly in Jeddah and Dammam), one should at least be brought along in order to avoid possible harassment from the religious police or to be used as a means of deflecting attention from potentially aggravating men. Saudi law prohibits women from mingling with unrelated men. Some family restaurants will go further and will not (knowingly) allow a married couple to dine together with a single man. Women may not drive cars, although as of 2008 there are ? not for the first time ? rumblings that this may soon change. In theory, women may not even be driven by unrelated people (e.g. taxi drivers), although this is widely ignored and rarely enforced. A woman may travel alone. They may also stay alone in hotels, although hotels may require written permission on check-in unless the woman holds an official form of ID. While all this legally applies to foreign women as well, in practice foreign women are not restrained by their families in the way that Saudi women are, and can have considerable leeway if they choose to take it. For example, a foreign woman and her boyfriend (or even male coworker) can simply claim to be husband and wife, and thus mingle freely ? although, if caught doing so, they could sometimes be subject to a short stay in jail. A single woman accosted by the police or the muttawa and requested to come with them does not have to (and, for their own safety, should not) go with them alone: you have the right to call your mahram and have them arrive, and you should use it. However, you may be required to surrender your ID, and you may not leave until the police/muttawa allow you to.

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Saudi Arabia Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.

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