Female space is often read as being private space, in opposition to public space. This has particularly been assumed in Western scholarship on Gulf societies where strict rules of gender segregation and the seclusion of women have been predominant cultural norms. Yet a number of theorists have recently challenged this facile association of female with the private realm in rigid opposition to male, public space (see, for example, Nelson 1974, Afsaruddin 1999). In the Gulf, female space may be bo…