Saudi Women Expendable?

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. 5,000 Saudi women wishing to expand their educational horizions abroad attended the Canadian Education Network's (CEN)Education Fair in Jeddah only to have the "Saudi Church Police" shut down their booth for having modestly dressed female booth attendants.

The Saudi Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice took exception as did many other private Saudi Male citizens over Canadian Education Network's modestly dressed women booth recruiters.

Saudi's have long enjoyed having their "Breeding Stock" educated, just not visible, unless covered from head to toe and accompanied by a male family member at all times.

The Saudi government for decades have allowed it's students (mostly male) to come abroad to attend Western Educational Institutions. Unfortunately for the Saudi's it has been claimed Saudi women are the more educated and pursue higher education more than Saudi men.

Yet some Saudi's seem to think in Saudi Arabia their women are expendable in the work force preferring their highly educated women to stay home and become breeding stock for other Saudi males in which the woman's families choose for her without question.

Colleges and universities from Canada and other countries regularly hold Education Fairs in order to boost and or image-enhance their enrollment number in their quest of claiming multicultural diversity to the world. What better way than by recruiting foreign students with fat bankrolls?

Some say Foreign students are charged exhorbantly higher tuition fees than their Host Countries own citizens? Who is to say?

Currently it seems there are no Canadian Education Fairs being held in Third World Countries. Perhaps Multiculturalism does have a price, Foreign Dollars.

Barry (NP)

Source:http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Columnists/Jacobs_Mindelle/2007/05/08/4162332.html