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RIYADH - Saudi Arabia's leading ugg boots 2010 supermarket chain has broken the country's strict taboo on women working in public with a pilot program of women cashiers, a company official said. Panda hypermarkets has put 16 Saudi women to work at one store in the Red Sea city of Jeddah to test the concept in a country where Islamic conservatives have prevented women from working in gender-mixed environments. "The women, compared to men, are really hard workers," Panda spokesman Tarik Ismail said. "If everything goes okay, then we will expand the program (in) the kingdom." Ismail said the company has been quiet about the move due UGG Classic Tall Bomber Jacket Boots to the sensitivity of the issue. A conservative Islamic educator has already called for a boycott of Panda due to the mixing, but it is not yet clear whether that has had any impact. Operating more than 100 retail stores across the country, the United Azizia Panda Co, owned by publicly listed foods giant Savola, already employs women sales clerks in its hypermarket in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. But inside Saudi Arabia, Islamic conservatives have for decades enforced a prohibition against unrelated men and women mixing in the workplace. The result is that nearly all retail sales are UGG Classic Short Patent Paisley Boots conducted by men. A Jeddah University business professor, Reem Asaad, has been campaigning since 2008 to force the labor ministry to allow women sales clerks in lingerie shops, but with little success. The caution in the test suggests how sensitive and revolutionary the idea is, in a country that bans women from driving and forces them to cover up in shroud-like black abayas and face-covering veils when in public. The test was permitted by the local labor office in Jeddah, the relatively progressive Saudi city where the kingdom's ultra-conservative rules on women are more loosely enforced. Inside the HyperPanda market in the UGG Classic Tall Patent Paisley Boots Roshan mall in a wealthy area of Jeddah, the female cashiers are sectioned off in check-out lanes "reserved for women and families." That models Saudi restaurants, which have separate sections for men and for women and families. Unlike their male counterparts, the new cashiers are not in Panda uniforms, instead wearing abayas and veils. Ismail stresses that the company UGG Classic Crochet Boots has mainly hired "needy" women - those who lack other sources of income. "We want to help them," he said. Still, Ismail said the company plans to expand the program nationwide, if the labor ministry gives the go-ahead. "We are waiting for permission." But opposition to Panda's move has UGG Classic Cardy Boots already materialized. Last week, Sheikh Yussef al-Ahmad, a professor at Riyadh's Imam University known for his strident opposition to gender mixing, called on a television program to boycott Panda. Ahmad said mixing was against Islamic tenets and an aspect of the westernization of Islamic culture. Agence France-Presse