You can't vote, but we'll take your money!
They can't drive, they can't vote - nope, not American 13-year-olds, but grown women in Saudi Arabia.
But Saudi women can do, however, is control their own finances. A Saudi bank, Banque Saudi Fransi, is planning an advertising campaign promoting women's management of their own finances, or "ladies' banking," as they call it. "You have your dreams. You have your ambitions," says the commercial voice-over - a little odd in a country that restricts women's participation in public life, no?
The campaign is "daring," according to the Times for a country in which a man interviewed for the article noted the role of women remains "highly sensitive."
Any thoughts?
Contributed by Jess Wakeman
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It's something of a testimony to the impellent power of capitalism to initiate some degree of progress.
The thing about regimes like Saudi Arabia's is that they're inherently antithetical to any kind of progress because the infrastructure of absolute conservatism is meant to do the exact opposite. But if you have something of a market economy, then you have a system in which even a half-wit business person realizes that when you keep half your population subjugated, you alianate a commensurate amount of the market.
I wouldn't be surprised if the mullahs try to boycott this bank. A slogan like "what will they want next? jobs?" wouldn't surprise me either. While it's a constant that progress works in insidious ways in a plays like Saudi Arabia, it's also a fact that they establishment has learned to combat it by using the slipery slope metaphor.
The point of my post: yay capitalism and liberal democracy.
When I was in the middle east, they told the women (US Military) I was stationed with that they had to wear long sleeves and pants (not shorts) and they had to sit in the back seat of the car.
I thought the United States was supposed to set the example around the world for freedom.
Why do we continue to tolerate this crap from these countries like Saudi, Yemen, UAE???
Why do we continue to tolerate this crap from these countries like Saudi, Yemen, UAE???
Can you say OIL?