Saudi retailer breaks taboo with women cashiers

Saudi Arabia's leading supermarket chain has broken the country's strict taboo on women working in public with a pilot programme of women cashiers, a company official said.

Panda hypermarkets has put 16 Saudi women to work at one store in the Red Sea city of Jeddah to test the concept in a country where Islamic conservatives have prevented women from working in gender-mixed environments.

"The women, compared to men, are really hard workers," Panda spokesman Tarik Ismail said. "If everything goes okay, then we will expand the programme (in) the kingdom," he said.

Ismail said the company has been quiet about the move due to the sensitivity of the issue.

A conservative Islamic educator has already called for a boycott of Panda due to the mixing, but it is not yet clear whether that has had any impact.

Operating more than 100 retail stores across the country, the United Azizia Panda Co, owned by publicly listed foods giant Savola, already employs women sales clerks in its hypermarket in Dubai in the UAE.

But inside Saudi Arabia, Islamic conservatives have for decades enforced a prohibition against unrelated men and women mixing in the workplace. The result is that nearly all retail sales are conducted by men.

A Jeddah University business professor, Reem Asaad, has been campaigning since 2008 to force the labour ministry to allow women sales clerks in lingerie shops, but with little success.
 

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