RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - A U.S. Congressional delegation on a fact-finding trip to Saudi Arabia discovered one hard fact - the Saudi ministry of defense building has no women’s toilet.
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US Congresswomen: No ladies toilet in Saudi government building!
Nine members of US Congress including four women, headed by Rep. Peter Welch, traveled to talk with Saudi government officials about how the region assesses the threat of a nuclear Iran. When the lawmakers asked to use the bathroom after a lengthy visit to the Saudi Defense Ministry, they ran into an unexpected challenge: no women’s restroom.
“It was kind of like, hmm, OK, I’ve heard about oppression of women in Saudi Arabia, but really these are just something that are natural and biological,” Diane Black, Republican Congresswomen of Tennessee, said with a laugh.
The male lawmakers, who learned about the problem only after they had used the facilities, offered to stand and guard outside the men’s restroom while the women used it, but Saudi officials would not allow that, so the women had to “wait and endure it,” said Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont, the only Democrat on the trip.
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“It was a pretty astonishing experience for me and for them too, I think,” Welch said. “These are strong independent women and they’re used to being treated equally and treating others equally and now they are in a society where there’s strict gender segregation and it’s pretty stunning.”
“‘Why would you need it?’ That was sort of their (Saudi officials) attitude,” Welch said. “Though there is not a single Saudi women working there but you would think that they were accustomed to having delegations from other countries that included women.”
Two of the women are senior members of Congress. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee on state and foreign operations. The other two women on the trip were Diane Black of Tennessee and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.
Welch said the female members didnt make a scene or complain about the bathroom issue, knowing they were in another country with different rules.
Saudi women going picnic
The World Economic Forum 2011 Global Gender Gap Report ranked Saudi Arabia 131th out of 135 countries for gender equality, ahead of only Mali, Pakistan, Chad and Yemen. It was one of four countries, including Belize, Brunei Darussalam and Qatar, to score a zero for political empowerment of women.
Saudi women cannot drive a car, the only nation in the world to have that law, or leave home without a male family member’s permission, and many struggle to find jobs in sex-segregated workplaces.
Women also must adhere to a strict dress code, although Western officials aren’t subject to those rules while traveling in the country. Most Saudi women wear a headscarf, veil and abaya, a floor-length cloak.
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Saudi women playing football
Nadya Khalife, a Middle East and North Africa researcher in the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch with offices in Washington and around the world, said she’s “not at all surprised” that the Saudi Defense Ministry lacks a women’s restroom.
“This just goes to show the extent to which the Saudi government doesn’t have women in mind,” she wrote in an email. “Not only are women invisible in their architectural plans, but also as full members in society.”
An official at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington declined to comment on this issue.
Source:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington … 52793930/1
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/ … t=hs&or=tn
http://www.allvoices.com/news/11335930- … i-ministry