Yet, the tradition has been breached. During an interview, three of the new women said their jobs are just a first step. They envision Qatar eventually appointing women ambassadors. Asked how that squares with the need for women to minimize contact with men outside the family, they began trying to quantify the limits their upbringing allowed. One said contact with men 20 percent of the time was acceptable, a bid quickly raised to 50 percent by another.
Education brings so many changes to people's minds.
At the southwestern tip of the peninsula, although outside the Gulf region proper, Yemen is developing democratic institutions, including direct elections for president, that the country's leaders say they hope will serve as a model for the entire Middle East. Compared with the political changes that spread through Eastern Europe, or the economic changes that reshaped Southeast Asia, what is underway in the Gulf is hardly revolutionary. Inspired by an inherently conservative desert tribal culture, as well as a socially strict strain of Sunni Islam, countries such as Saudi Arabia maintain a rigorous separation between the sexes. Women cannot drive, for example. In much of the region, marriage to outsiders is frowned upon and, in some cases, legally regulated.