Blasphemy Rights Day.

"Female candidates have had to speak behind a partition while campaigning or be represented by a man.
...
The election is segregated, like everything else in this deeply conservative society."  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35075702

It doesn't much matter whether there is an actual law against women speaking to men in public.  "There is no official law that bans women from driving but deeply held religious beliefs prohibit it, with Saudi clerics arguing that female drivers 'undermine social values'."http://www.theweek.co.uk/60339/eleven-things-women-in-saudi-arabia-cant-do

Also worth noting (from an article ten years ago, so perhaps things have improved somewhat since then): "Men and women do almost nothing together in Saudi Arabia -- at least not in public. For instance, events like a soccer match are strictly for men. It's a country where culture and religion make women live mostly restricted segregated lives. In public, there are separate sections where they eat, where they work, and where they pray. There is also segregation inside their own homes.

One woman took 60 Minutes on a tour of her house, and showed a separate entrance and living room for men. The woman said the men's living room is separated by a closed door from the living room for women. She also said that unless guests are close relatives, men and women don't sit together in the same room. It's not a custom she would consider violating.

'The society force it. And if you do something against the society, you will feel, you will have a problem,' she says. 'So it's better to go within the mainstream of the society, fit in, be conformist in a way, and be innovative in another way.'

According to the rules of Saudi society, a woman needs written permission from a man to do almost anything: to get an education, to get a job, and even to buy a plane ticket. " http://www.cbsnews.com/news/women-speak-out-in-saudi-arabia/

Sounds a lot like what we here in the West call assimilation. It's the same conformist attitude that forces Muslim women who don the veil to remove it under penalty of law, as well as, to fit in.

Caringheart wrote: I get your point, but there is no punishment for wearing, or not wearing the hijab, in the west.�

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering


Hamza Yusuf criticized the French government for the ban, writing:

While I am personally opposed to the face veil, it is a legitimate, if minority opinion, in the Islamic legal tradition for a woman to wear one. Most women who wear it believe they are following God�s injunction and not their husband�s. French laicism seems as fundamentalist as the very religious fanatics it wants to keep out. On a trip to France a few years ago, I was shocked to see pornography openly displayed on the streets in large advertisements. How odd that to unveil a woman for all to gape at is civilized, but for her to cover up to ward off gazes is a crime... While the French Prime Minister sees no problem with exposing in public places a woman�s glorious nakedness, he is oddly and quite rabidly disturbed by allowing others to cover it up. The sooner secular nations learn to allow people of faith to live their lives in peace, the sooner peace will flourish.

Caringheart wrote: Greetings abuayisha,Can we agree that when something becomes a threat it must not be allowed?� That laws are made to protect people from threat?

The ban has little or nothing to do with public safety, but any conspicuous religious symbol is seen as a threat to secularism in France.