Why burka debate is about feminism and not racism

EVEN eight years on I can remember clearly the outfits worn by the husband and wife leaving the restaurant I was just arriving at.

- Sam Lister

They were strangers and I saw them for probably only 30 seconds but the way they dressed shocked me. The man was wearing a very trendy Carhartt T-shirt with jeans and expensive-looking trainers.

His wife, however, was covered from head to toe, shrouded in black, hidden from the world. It is not as though I had never seen a woman covered up in a burka or niqab before but encountering a couple dressed so dramatically differently made me boil with anger. One in the latest fashionable Western clobber, the other forced to hide her face.

This woman absolutely had not chosen to dress like this.

How can I possibly know? Because the fleeting encounter happened in Saudi Arabia. No Saudi woman has a choice in how they dress or pretty much anything else. Even visitors like me don't really get a choice.

I was wearing an abaya, a loose covering, after being told by an embassy official that I could, of course, decide not to put it on but I would be treated badly by the men in the restaurant. The poor official also had to drive me to the venue because I was later finishing work than the rest of the group and there was no other way for me to join them.

WHEN I entered the private dining area, all my female colleagues were wearing abayas, too, while the men sat there in their usual business suits. We did it because it is polite to abide by a nation's codes and culture. We were there to cover a visit by Theresa May, then prime minister, and, blimey, it was just such a relief when she carried out all of her engagements without covering her hair or even wearing the abayas like the female hacks.

May had told us on the journey over there that she hoped women in the country would "see what women can achieve". She has always been a great champion for women.