To give you some idea of the opposition to women working in Saudi:
Labor Minister Ghazi al-Ghusaibi issued a regulation last year [2006] requiring women, and not men, to work in lingerie shops. He couched the proposal in terms that would appeal to the religious hierarchy, arguing that salesmen holding up and discussing lacy undergarments with women was more likely to lead to sexual temptation than allowing women to work. But many Saudis say that his ultimate intention was to open up most retail jobs to women.
"The clerics knew this was the thin end of the wedge and defeated him," says one Saudi businessman in Riyadh, the capital. "They know that all these symbolic issues – women driving, working with men – will erode the foundations of their control." The Saudi Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Ashaikh described allowing women to work as leading to "hellfire" and Mr. Ghusaibi received a personal death threat from Osama bin Laden for his trouble.
To give you some idea of the opposition to women working in Saudi:
Labor Minister Ghazi al-Ghusaibi issued a regulation last year [2006] requiring women, and not men, to work in lingerie shops. He couched the proposal in terms that would appeal to the religious hierarchy, arguing that salesmen holding up and discussing lacy undergarments with women was more likely to lead to sexual temptation than allowing women to work. But many Saudis say that his ultimate intention was to open up most retail jobs to women.
"The clerics knew this was the thin end of the wedge and defeated him," says one Saudi businessman in Riyadh, the capital. "They know that all these symbolic issues – women driving, working with men – will erode the foundations of their control." The Saudi Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Ashaikh described allowing women to work as leading to "hellfire" and Mr. Ghusaibi received a personal death threat from Osama bin Laden for his trouble.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0424/p01s04-wome.html?page=2