Purdah
Purdah is a curtain which makes sharp separation between the world of man and that of a woman, between the community as a whole and the family which is its heart, between the street and the home, the public and the private, just as it sharply separates society and the individual.
Purdah requires women to avoid men and to cover most of their bodies. Purdah applies between members of the opposite sex who are not mahram (or married). Mahram is defined as the kind of kinship which makes sexual relations incestuous. By blood, parents, grandparents, siblings, and uncles and aunts are mahram. Parents in-law and step-parents are also mahram. In addition, rada (fiqh), or breastfeeding, causes someone to be mahram. The woman must provide five full meals of breast milk in order to cause "milk kinship". Aunts sometimes breast-feed nephews by marriage, so that the families can mingle when they become adults.
The mutaween, particularly active in Riyadh, Buraydah and Tabuk, can detain Saudis who violate religious law. Women can be charged with prostitution for socializing with a man who is not a relative or husband. Enforcement of purdah has relaxed in the wake of the September 11 attacks against the World Trade Center in 2001.
Read more about this topic: Women's Rights In Saudi Arabia