The kingdom has long been a man´s world, where women have the legal status of children. Do the latest reforms represent progress - or a PR exercise?At the Luna food factory on the south-east outskirts of Jeddah, Mashael Elghamdi sits at her computer in an artfully ripped AC/DC T-shirt and jeans. The faint whirr of machines processing cans of beans, cream and evaporated milk can be heard over the sound of eight women typing and sometimes laughing. A screensaver of a smiling Cameron Diaz gazes out from one corner of the room. This is an all-female office. And because there is no need for the full-length abayas women are legally required to wear when interacting with men at work or in public, it is a riot of colour.On the factory floor below, women in custom-made overalls on an all-female production line apply labels to cans. `All the women you see here do everything themselves,` says supervisor Fatima Albasisi, who oversees 90 workers. A staircase and a corridor separate the female factory workers from their male counterparts, while the men-only offices are in a different building. `If there´s a problem with the machines, they can fix it,` Albasisi adds. `If I could, I´d have a factory entirely run by women, no men at all. In my experience, women show up to work on time and make fewer mistakes.` Continue reading...
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