Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Restaurant Segregation

One thing that's hard for me to get used to here in Saudi Arabia is the gender segregation.


I don't quite understand the logic myself. Men and women shop together in grocery stores, malls, and souks, but for some reason, gender segregation is applied strictly in places like restaurants and doctors' offices.


Restaurants here are required to have a separate entrance and dining area for "Single Men" who are not accompanied by female family members.


Men who accompany their female family members to restaurants are allowed to enter and dine in the "Family Section."


The Family Sections of restaurants often have dividers or curtains or even separate rooms for privacy for each party.

4 comments:

Gaelyn said...

But thank goodness they have Starbucks.

Jerry Mc Kenna said...

Gender segregation is something I cannot get my head around. It is so completely unnatural. I don't know what it does for young women but it makes for extremely frustrated and sex crazed young men.

Susie of Arabia said...

They are everywhere here! Almost as if I'm in Seattle - all right, not quite!

Susie of Arabia said...

I couldn't agree with you more, Jerry. It's high on my list of things that I dislike about living here.