Saudi women will have to continue to discuss their bra and panty sizes with male shop assistants for while. A June 1 government deadline for underwear shops across the conservative Muslim kingdom to replace their male sales staff with women has been postponed.Some clerics are continuing to oppose the idea of women holding a job, while the government has said it is giving lingerie stores more time to hire female staff.
The deadline was announced last year in a bid to grant greater job opportunities for women. It was also meant to eliminate an inconsistency in a kingdom so puritanical it forces women to cover themselves from head to toe in public, does not allow them to travel unless accompanied by a close male relative, balks at the idea of women behind the wheel of a car - yet forces them to discuss their bodies with men.
At present, only a handful of all-female shopping malls in large cities cater to women seeking greater discretion. Men are not allowed to enter these centres and all the sales staff are women.
About 10 000 Saudi women have applied for jobs in lingerie shops, according to newspaper reports.
Labour Minister Ghazi al-Gosaibi said, "Based on pleas by shop owners... that they were unable to comply with the deadline, the ministry's decision is postponed until all the preparations are finalised."
The minister has been trying to balance the kingdom's obsession with tradition with growing economic and social pressures. His efforts have earned him the ire of Islamic hardliners, including al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who has termed him a "heretic".
More Saudis now seek jobs once considered menial amid a slowdown in growth that has seen the kingdom go from being an economic powerhouse providing cradle-to-grave benefits for all its citizens to a country still rich in oil but unable to provide jobs and security for all.
Most Saudis are still used to being served by a huge expatriate population of about five million people, many of whom work as maids and waiters, although some have qualified as engineers and doctors.
Lately, the government has been urging Saudis to get educated and snag some job experience on the grounds that the kingdom cannot afford to keep paying expatriates for jobs Saudis could do themselves. There have also been calls, rejected by the clergy, to allow women to contribute to the economy by working. About half of Saudi Arabia's 20 million people are female. Half of the total population is under 25.