Channels

Saudi women (archives)
Photo: Reuters

Report: Gyms for Saudi women face closure

Increasingly popular sports clubs for women in Arab kingdom face shut-down because government only licenses men's clubs

Increasingly popular sports clubs and gyms for women in Saudi Arabia face shut-down because the government only licenses men's clubs, according to a Saudi newspaper report.

 

Dozens of privately-established women-only gyms around the country, which strictly separates men and women outside family venues, could be closed because there is no regulatory authority for them, the Arab News said.

 

While the General Presidency for Sport and Youth Welfare has the authority over men's gyms, it has not been allowed to regulate those for women, according to the report.

 

That means that the women's gyms springing up in major cities are unlicensed and illegal, according to the report.

 

Female Saudi fitness fans frequently complain of the lack of places to exercise outside the home, since they cannot go to men's clubs.

 

Saudi Arabia's conservative brand of Islam strictly forbids the mixing of unrelated members of the opposite sex, and women in the presence of men not from their families must remain completely covered in the black abaya shroud.

 

Some investors have opened women-only gyms calling them beauty salons or, in one case, a "natural treatment clinic," Arab News said.

 

Lawyer Abdulaziz al-Qasim told the newspaper that no government department wants to take responsibility for the issue, lest they be attacked by conservative Islamic clerics, many of whom oppose sports activities for women.

 

The result, he said, is a move by the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs to shut down the existing gyms.

 

"It's clear that one department is now taking the decision to put an end to the increasing number of unlicensed clubs," he said.

 

Women to be allowed to vote?

Meanwhile, a senior government official was quoted as saying on Sunday that Saudi Arabia was considering allowing women to vote in municipal elections this year but they would still be barred from running for office.

 

Saudi Arabia is the world's biggest oil exporter and a key ally of the United States. The absolute monarchy applies an austere form of Sunni Islam which bans unrelated men and women from mixing.

 

Prince Mansour bin Muteb, deputy minister for municipal and rural affairs, made the comments after attending a conference of municipal councils in the Eastern Province, Saudi newspapers reported.

 

The meeting's recommendations included one that women should be eligible to vote, the liberal-leaning daily al-Watan said.

 

Officials at the municipal and rural affairs ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.

 

Only eligible males voted in municipal elections in 2005 which were the desert kingdom's first ever nationwide polls since the state's inception in 1932.

 

The election for half the seats on the councils was part of a series of reforms undertaken after the September 11 attacks of 2001 focused international attention on Saudi Arabia's political and religious culture. Most of the attackers were Saudi, acting in the name of the Islamist group al Qaeda.

 

The meeting in the Eastern Province, the first indication that the municipal vote will take place this year, recommended that the government continues to name half the members of the council, al-Watan said.

 

AFP and Reuters contributed to this report

 


פרסום ראשון: 04.27.09, 13:22
 new comment
Warning:
This will delete your current comment