Question: Why do women put on abayas?
About the article "Saudi Arabia", section "Dress".

Candidate passages:
McSally was represented by the Rutherford Institute in a successful 2001 lawsuit against the Department of Defense, challenging the military policy that required U.S. and U.K. servicewomen stationed in Saudi Arabia to wear the body-covering abaya when traveling off base in the country.
At the time of the lawsuit McSally, as a Major (O-4), was the highest ranking female fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force.
McSally's suit alleged that "the regulations required her to send the message that she believes women are subservient to men."
In addition to the issue of religious garb, McSally noted that policies also included other requirements:In a "60 Minutes" interview broadcast on CBS on Jan. 20, she described the discrimination she experienced under the policy: "I have to sit in the back and at all times I must be escorted by a male .
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when questioned, is supposed to claim me as his wife," she said.
"I can fly a single-seat aircraft in enemy territory, but [in Saudi Arabia I can't drive a vehicle.
"During this process, she was granted audience with several high level officials, including two Secretaries of Defense, William Cohen and Donald Rumsfeld, which was atypical of a service member of her comparatively junior rank and position, especially in light of her public protest.
General Tommy Franks, then commander of the United States Central Command (USCENTCOM), announced in 2002 that U.S. military servicewomen would no longer be required to wear the abaya, although they would be "encouraged" to do so as a show of respect for local customs.
Commenting on the change, Central Command spokesman, Colonel Rick Thomas, said it was not made because of McSally's lawsuit, but had already been "under review" before the lawsuit was filed.
News reports noted that McSally had been fighting for a change in the policy for seven years, and had filed the lawsuit after she had been threatened with a court martial if she did not comply and wear the abaya.
Critics of the policy noted that while female military personnel had been required to wear the abaya, the situation was not the same for "women diplomats" of the U.S. Department of State assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, who were actually encouraged "not" to wear the abaya when they were involved in official business, "...because they are representing the United States."
Embassy officials stated that, "...in their personal time, embassy employees can choose how to dress."
According to these U.S. officials, "...the Saudi government does not require non-Muslim women to wear a dark robe known as an abaya...
The official guidance, issued by the Saudi Embassy in Washington, says that foreigners should dress conservatively but they are not required to wear the robe.
"Eventually the U.S. Congress "approved legislation that prohibited anyone in the military from requiring or encouraging servicewomen to put on abayas in Saudi Arabia or to use taxpayers’ money to buy them."
Among non-mahram men, women must cover the parts of the body that are awrah (not meant to be exposed).
In much of Islam, a women's face is not considered awrah.
In Saudi Arabia and some other Arab states, all of the body is considered awrah except the hands and eyes.
Accordingly, most women are expected wear the hijab (head covering), a full black cloak called an abaya, and a face-veil called niqab.
Many historians and Islamic scholars hold that the custom, if not requirement, of the veil predates Islam in parts of the region.
They argue that the Quran was interpreted to require the veil as part of adapting it to tribal traditions.
Traditionally, women's clothing must not reveal anything about her body.
It is supposed to be thick, opaque, and loose.
It should not resemble the clothing of men (or non-Muslims).
The strictness of the dress code varies by region.
In Jeddah, for example, many women go out with their faces uncovered; Riyadh however, is more conservative.
Some shops sell designer abayas that have elements such as flared sleeves or a tighter form.
Fashionable abayas come in colors other than black, and may be decorated with patterns and glitter.
According to one designer, abayas are "no longer just abayas.
Today, they reflect a woman's taste and personality.
"Although the dress code is often regarded in the West as a highly visible symbol of oppression, Saudi women place the dress code low on the list of priorities for reform or leave it off entirely.
Journalist Sabria Jawhar complains that Western readers of her Huffington Post blog are obsessed with her veil.
She calls the niqab "trivial":A majority of women say they want to wear the veil.
They cite Islamic piety, pride in family traditions, and less sexual harassment from male colleagues.
For many women, the dress code is a part of the right to modesty that Islam guarantees women.
Some also perceive attempts at reform as anti-Islamic intrusion by Westerners:"They fear Islam, and we are the world's foremost Islamic nation."
The books in the series (each named after an imponderable covered in the book) are: "Imponderables" (1986, reissued as "Why Don't Cats Like to Swim?"
in 2004), Harper, ISBN 978-0-06-075148-7 "Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?"
(1987), Harper, ISBN 978-0-06-074092-4  "When Do Fish Sleep?"
(1989), Harper, ISBN 978-0-06-074093-1  "Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses?"
(1990), HarperCollins, ISBN 978-0-06-092111-8 "Do Penguins Have Knees?"
(1991), Harper, ISBN 978-0-06-074091-7  "When Did Wild Poodles Roam the Earth?"
(1992, reissued as "Are Lobsters Ambidextrous?"
in 2005), Harper, ISBN 978-0-06-076295-7 "How Does Aspirin Find a Headache?"
(1993), Harper, ISBN 978-0-06-074094-8  "What Are Hyenas Laughing At, Anyway?"
(1995), Berkley, ISBN 978-0-425-15451-9 "How Do Astronauts Scratch an Itch?"
(1996), Berkley, ISBN 978-0-425-15984-2  "Do Elephants Jump?"
(2004), HarperCollins, ISBN 978-0-06-053913-9 "Why Do Pirates Love Parrots?"
(2006), Harper, ISBN 978-0-06-088843-5  The books feature additional chapters on "Frustables", which are defined as imponderables that are uniquely frustrating because they lack a clear answer.
Some of the recurring frustables are: Why do you so often see one shoe lying along the side of the road?
Why do the English drive on the left and most other countries on the right?
Why do American women shave their armpits?
Why do doctors have such messy handwriting?
Feldman also wrote a book solely about linguistic mysteries, titled "Who Put the Butter in Butterfly?"
(1989).
The book deals with the mysterious origins of names and phrases in the English language.
The term "Imponderables" is a trademark. 
Saudi Arabian dress strictly follows the principles of hijab (the Islamic principle of modesty, especially in dress).
The predominantly loose and flowing, but covering, garments are suited to Saudi Arabia's desert climate.
Traditionally, men usually wear an ankle length garment woven from wool or cotton (known as a thawb), with a keffiyeh (a large checkered square of cotton held in place by an agal) or a ghutra (a plain white square made of finer cotton, also held in place by an agal) worn on the head.
For rare chilly days, Saudi men wear a camel-hair cloak (bisht) over the top.
Women's clothes are decorated with tribal motifs, coins, sequins, metallic thread, and appliques.
Women are required to wear an abaya or modest clothing when in public.
 Ghutrah () is a traditional headdress typically worn by Arab men.
It is made of a square of cloth ("scarf"), usually cotton, folded and wrapped in various styles around the head.
It is commonly worn in areas with an arid climate, to provide protection from direct sun exposure, and also protection of the mouth and eyes from blown dust and sand.
 Agal () is an item of Arab headgear constructed of cord which is fastened around the Ghutrah to hold it in place.
The "agal" is usually black in colour.
 Thawb () is the standard Arabic word for garment.
It is ankle length, usually with long sleeves similar to a robe.
 Bisht () is a traditional Arabic men's cloak usually only worn for prestige on special occasions such as weddings.
 Abaya () is a women's garment.
It is a black cloak which loosely covers the entire body except the head.
Some women choose to cover their faces with a niqāb and some do not.
Some Abayas cover the top of the head as well.
According to the International Labor Organization, Saudi women constitute 18.6% of the native workforce.
The rate of participation has grown from 15.3% in 1990 to 18.6% in 2011.
Other statistical reports quoted by the Al-Riyadh daily newspaper state 14.6% of workers in the public and private sectors of the Kingdom are women.
When foreign expatriate workers are included in the total, the percentage of working Saudi women drops further to 6.1%.
This compares with over 40% in Muslim nations such as United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Malaysia.
Some critics complain that this constitutes an underutilization of women's skills, since females make up 70% of the students in Saudi institutes of higher education.
Even some jobs taken by women in almost every other country were reserved for men in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi delegation to the United Nations International Women's Year conference in Mexico City in 1975 and the Decade for women conference in Nairobi in 1985, was made up entirely of men.
Employment for women has a number of restrictions under Saudi law and culture.
According to the Saudi Labor Minister Dr. Ghazi Al-Qusaibi (speaking in 2006): "the Ministry is not acting to [promote women's employment since the best place for a woman to serve is in her own home.
... therefore no woman will be employed without the explicit consent of her guardian.
We will also make sure that the [woman's] job will not interfere with her work at home with her family, or with her eternal duty of raising her children... A woman's work must also be deemed suitable for the female physique and mentality.
Women are allowed to work only in capacities in which they can serve women exclusively; there must be no contact or interaction with the opposite gender.
A woman's work should not lead to her traveling without a close male relative—which presents considerable problems as women are not allowed to drive motor vehicles and there is little or no public transportation in the Kingdom.
(Most working women, however, out of necessity and practicality travel to work without a male relative and are alone with a driver.
)Consequently until 2005, women worked only as doctors, nurses, teachers, women's banks, or in a few other special situations where they had contact only with women.
Almost all of these women had college and graduate degrees, and were employed either in schools, where men were not permitted to teach girls; or in hospitals, because conservative families prefer that female doctors and nurse treat their wives, sisters, and daughters.
Jobs such as judges, and positions of high public office were forbidden for women.
Women's banks were an innovation allowed in 1980 to give women a place to put their money without having to have any contact with men.
The banks employ women exclusively for every position except for the guards posted at the door to see that no men enter by mistake.
"Usually a guard was married to one of the women employees inside, so that if documents had to be delivered he could deal with his wife rather than risking even the slight contact taking place between unmarried members of the opposite sex."
While the Labor Minister Al-Qusaibi stressed the need for women to say at home he also stated that "there is no option but to start jobs for the millions of women" in Saudi Arabia.
In recent years, the Labor Ministry has banned the employment of men or non-Saudi women in lingerie and other stores where women’s garments and perfumes are sold.
This policy started in 2005 when the Ministry announced a policy of staffing lingerie shops with women.
Since the shops served women customers, employing women would prevent mixing of the sexes in public ("ikhtilat").
Many Saudi women also disliked discussing the subject of their undergarments with male shop clerks.
However, the move met opposition from within the ministry and from conservative Saudis, who argued the presence of women outside the home encouraged "ikhtilat", and that according to Sharia, a woman's work outside the house is against her fitrah (natural state).
The few shops that employed women were "quickly closed by the religious police" (aka "Hai'i").
Women responded by boycotting lingerie shops, and in June 2011 King Abdullah issued another decree giving lingerie shops one year to replace men workers with women.
This was followed by similar decrees for shops and shop departments specializing in other products for women, such as cosmetics, "abayas" and wedding dresses.
The decrees came at "the height of the Arab Spring and were "widely interpreted" by activists as an attempt to preempt "pro-democracy protests".
However the policy has meant further clashes between conservatives and Hai'a men on the one hand, and the ministry, women customers and employees at female-staffed stores on the other.
In 2013, the Ministry and the Hai'a leadership met to negotiate new terms.
In November 2013, 200 religious police signed a letter stating that female employment was causing such a drastic increase in instances of "ikhtilat", that "their job was becoming impossible.
"When women do work jobs also held by men, they often find it difficult to break into full-time work with Employee benefits like allowances, health insurance and social security.
According to a report in the "Saudi Gazette", an employer told a female reporter that her health insurance coverage did not include care for childbirth, but that of a male employee included such coverage for his wife.
Saudi women are now seen developing professional careers as doctors, teachers and even business leaders, a process described by in 2007 by ABC News as "painfully slow".
Prominent examples include Dr. Salwa Al-Hazzaa, head of the ophthalmology department at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh and Lubna Olayan, named by "Forbes" and "Time" as one of the world's most influential businesswomen.
Some "firsts" in Saudi women's employment occurred in 2013, when the Kingdom registered its first female trainee lawyer, (Arwa al-Hujaili), its first female lawyer to be granted an official license from its Ministry of Justice (Bayan Alzahran), and the first female Saudi police officer (Ayat Bakhreeba).
Bakhreeba earned her master’s degree in public law from the Dubai police academy and is the first police woman to obtain a degree from the high-level security institute.
Furthermore, her thesis on “children’s rights in the Saudi system” was chosen as the best research paper by the police academy.