JEDDAH: Women cashiers were at work in several Jeddah supermarkets Saturday as their employers ignored a fatwa by the country's highest religious authority forbidding female checkout clerks. The popular Marhaba chain kept the women on the job despite the six-day-old ruling signed by Grand Mufti Sheikh Saleh Aal Al-Sheikh and six other senior religious scholars which contradicted a key government policy to create jobs for women. A Marhaba official said the women would keep working until they received an order from the Labor Ministry to stop the practice, only begun in the past three months after the ministry said it was permitted. “We will continue to let the women do their jobs. We have not received any official letter from the Ministry of Labor to stop the practice,” he said on condition of anonymity. “We have more than 25 women working now in all our branches,” he said. It was unclear whether Panda, another supermarket chain pioneering the use of female checkout cashiers, had its women working Saturday. On Sunday the official fatwa-issuing body under the Council of Senior Scholars, the top Saudi Islamic authority, ruled that the cashier jobs were not permissible because they resulted in the women mixing with unrelated men. “It is not permissible for a woman to work in a place where they mix with men,” the fatwa said. “It is necessary to keep away from places where men congregate. Women should look for decent work that does not make it possible for them to attract men or be attracted by men.” Seeking to address both a 28.4 percent unemployment rate for women in 2009 and create jobs for women whose families have no other means of support, early this year the Labor Ministry gave permission to supermarket chains and clothing stores to try using female cashiers. The first stores to start were all in Jeddah. On Wednesday, the Labor Ministry said it had no reaction yet to the fatwa because they had not yet received it through official channels. – Agence France
