Saudi Arabia's first woman cabinet minister cannot appear on television without permission, a newspaper quoted her as saying on Monday. Noura al-Faiz's appointment in February as deputy minister for women's education was hailed as a big step for the integration of women in conservative Saudi Arabia where a puritanical form of Islam bans women from driving, voting and mixing with unrelated men.
"I don't take my veil off and I will not appear on television unless it is allowed for us to do so," Faiz told the daily Shamss, which published a picture of the deputy minister wearing a headscarf with her face showing. Saudi state television has hired Saudi women as presenters in recent years as part of a reform drive launched after the September 11 attacks in US cities which focused international attention on radicalism in the world's biggest oil exporter.