Saudi Arabia Is Ending Gender Segregation In Restaurants
There will no longer be a need for separate entrances in restaurant establishments and cafes…
Yesterday, the Saudi government announced a large change that will be taking place in the Kingdom, bringing them one step closer to the social reform that the Crown Prince has been aiming towards. The Municipal and Rural Affairs Ministry declared that it was “removing a requirement by restaurants to have an entrance for single men and another for families,” consequently, there will no longer be a need for specific “private spaces.”
Although more luxurious and high-end hotels in Jeddah or Riyadh allow unrelated men and women to sit together, it’s not necessarily the norm within their society. Even western-chain restaurants such as Starbucks are usually segregated into sections for “family,” or women, and “singles” for men. According to The National, in “smaller restaurants or cafes with no space for segregation, women were not allowed in.”
With this new rule being abolished, there will no longer be a problem regarding gender.
This isn’t the first step that Saudi has taken in order to move forward, both in diversifying their economy and improving their tourism. It wasn’t too long ago that the Kingdom launched a new tourist visa; and this is other than the country’s line-up of events in entertainment and sports.
Diriyah’s music festival (and their upcoming 2020 Coachella), is just one of the many changes taking place.
It seems that the Kingdom is slowly but surely breaking free of the conventional ideologies placed by the past, and is looking forward towards the future.