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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!rayssd!hxe
From: hxe@rayssd.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Immodestly Dressed Women in the Workplace
Message-ID: <695@rayssd.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 12-Apr-85 16:09:57 EST
Article-I.D.: rayssd.695
Posted: Fri Apr 12 16:09:57 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 16-Apr-85 06:49:58 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Raytheon Co., Portsmouth RI
Lines: 64

One of the contracts my company holds is with certain companies
in Saudi Arabia.  Recently, I was presented with this 'souvenir'
of Saudi Arabia from one of our employees who travels there con-
stantly.  It is a letter from one of the Saudi employees to his
superiors.  This is not a joke!  (I left the grammar - obviously
that of someone to whom English is a second language - "as is"
but I corrected the spelling errors.)
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                   IMMODEST DRESS AND MINGLING
                     AMONG ARAMCO PERSONNEL

For some mysterious reason, women represent a substantial percen-
tage of ARAMCO's labor force.  This causes unavoidable mingling
of immodestly dressed females with men poses a powerful source of
temptation and immorality for the young Muslim working man who
face hard choices.  Some suffer patiently and hope that things
will improve in the future; others succumb to evil and are lost.
Still others prefer the safety of fleeing from the scene of trou-
ble, and quit work at ARAMCO or just refuse to work for the com-
pany in the first place as soon as they learn about the pitfalls
of working in a mixed environment reeking with temptation and
sin.

Is it not high time to change the situation?  We now have a good
number of Saudi young employees in high technical and managerial
positions.  Our biggest problem is the mingling of sexes.  Women
work as secretaries, file room attendants, custodians of maps,
storerooms and mail centers, even teachers at ITC (Industrial
Training Centers) where they are shamelessly assigned to teach
Saudi teenage employees.  How can seventeen-to-twenty year old
Saudi men face the tribulations concomitant with such a delicate
stage of their growth?

I raise my cry in the name of all my fellow employees in ARAMCO.
We demand that women be banned from work among men.  We demand
the removal of all exposure and mingling in any form.  I do not
think this is difficult to enforce in a Muslim country like ours,
which we pray God to preserve.

We trust God and the responsible officials to take necessary
action to fight this root of evil, and destroy it, with the will
of God who stands behind all good deeds and intentions.


                                        Muhammad Sa'id al-Ghandi
                                        ARAMCO-Abqaiq


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By the way, the "immodestly dressed" women are covered from head
to toe; they only lack veils over their faces to make them "mod-
est."

Also, this letter was written February 11, 1985, so it wasn't dug
out of some some 1940's archive or anything!
-- 
--Heather Emanuel {allegra, decvax!brunix, linus, ccice5} rayssd!hxe
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   I don't think my company *has* an opinion, so the ones in this
                  article are obviously my own.
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"Ain't life a brook...
 Sometimes I feel just like a polished stone"  -Ferron