I used to work in Qatar, the second-most conservative Middle-Eastern state. All the Qatari women had a car and paid driver, as well as free housing, free university tuition, and, get this, a guaranteed A average upon graduation! Sweet!
I had trouble getting home from work and one of my techs offered me a ride. "But I thought you are not allowed to drive". "I have a driver". "You have a driver? I WANT A DRIVER. I hate driving. The drivers here think they have licenses to kill. How do I get a driver?" "You must be a Qatari woman"
Fiddlesticks
So I opted for cabs. Gas was 17 cents a liter and a two dollar fare would take me anywhere.
Perhaps more urgent is getting rid of those damned black berkas. It was sunny, humid and at least 30C above every day, day-after-day, and those poor women must have fried some body parts under there. My office was in the OBGYN building at Hamad General Hospital, and the women gather in a large marble-lined waiting room for their appointments. I would walk in through the front doors into the air-conditioned lobby, to get hit by a tsunami of body odor! It was rancid! The women would scurry to protect their modesty by covering up what body parts they had exposed to cool off, while I held my breath and ran to my office.