A world where all jobs are for men

[YPestis]

Times magazine has an article on a debate in Saudi Arabia over whether rules should be loosened to allow more women to sell lingerie.

It's a strange concept. A deeply conservative country like Saudi Arabia has women shopping for their most intimate wear with strange men.

It makes me think of the recent Anna T post regarding the evils of working women and how they're taking jobs aware from more deserving men. In a country like Saudi Arabia, where Anna T's dream is a reality, I don't think fundies would appreciate buying underwear from strange men. You think Anna T likes to tell male strangers her bra size? Or what types of underwear she likes?

In fact, I'd bet most fundie females are particularly protective of allowing men into their most intimate situations, be it buying underclothing, seeing a doctor, or receiving marriage advice. Yet, they seem to think women who work are the Evil, and if they'd only go home and let the men take over. It boggles the mind how some women would probably insist on females for certain services, yet turn around and berate these very women for being bad mothers or wives.

[Terrie]

Let's be honest here. You put more thought into the issue, writing this post, than most fundies put into anything.

[bananacat]

I think that in the fundie world, women mostly wouldn't use these services. They would wear plain undies that come in a pack of 8, or they would sew their own. They wouldn't wear lingerie. They would rarely go to the doctor, because if they pray hard enough their pregnancies will go smoothly and end with an uneventful home birth. Clothing would be bought off the rack or made at home. For clothes that need to be custom-made, like wedding dresses, they would just make their own or have their friends or sisters make it for free. Most of the other jobs that women currently do, women would still do in fundieutopia, but without getting paid and with little training. Any training that they would get would come from their own mothers or maybe an apprenticeship arrangement with another women. So men wouldn't become nurses or teachers. Women would still teach and nurse, but they wouldn't get paid for it and it would be more localized to their own family and church. There would be no marriage counseling other than a male preacher telling the woman to be more submissive.

[fundiefan]

That would be a very scary world for too many reasons to count.

[justlurking]

Fundies ALWAYS find a way to get around their ridiculous rules and beliefs. Take Doug Phillips for example; Jen Epstein of Jen's Gems once described how he brags about not employing women; however, still manages to have women working at/for Vision Forum. He does this by not paying them. All the women who work in the warehouse are either unpaid volunteers or receive compensation through Dougie paying their husband for their services. Apparently, in VisionForumland you can still be a "keeper of the home" as long as your working for Dougie and not getting paid for your slave labor.

I'm sure if fundies were to get their way we would still have working women; however, they wouldn't be paid for their services.

[emmyfair]

If someone paid my husband for my work I would hit the ceiling.

[browngrl]

In a world where no woman is allowed any power or voice or job outside the home - more women would suffer and more women would die and their children would suffer and die along with them. :cry:

[dirtyhippiegirl]

The thing is, there are plenty of women working in Saudi. But most of them aren't SA women. They import women from Asian countries to fill the huge demand for nannies, maids, nurses, and other pink collar jobs. (It seems like every Saudi family who isn't dirt poor has a maid, driver, and nanny on at least a part-time basis -- or so I've been told from friends who've worked over there in healthcare.) I don't know if that's what makes Muslim fundamentalism different from Christian fundamentalist because the Christian fundamentalists expect their women to fulfill the job of nanny, maid, nurse, etc. at home while fundamentalist Muslims put a higher value on keeping the sexes separate or whether that means that those jobs wouldn't go away in Fundie Utopia...just be farmed out to an undesirable underclass of women?