IMAGINE the secret-society feel of a British private members’ club mixed with the casual dress of a pyjama party. That is the atmosphere of Luthan Hotel and Spa, a women-only establishment in Riyadh, the austere Saudi capital. Behind tinted windows and a closely guarded front door, women shed the full-length black abayas they must wear in public. Bleary-eyed, they roll out of bed into the hotel gym, a facility which in lodgings hosting both sexes would be for men only. In the evening the Luthan’s ladies gather for spirited natters in the restaurant, free to sit wherever they want, rather than in a “family section” shielded from the men-only area by screens.

As women have become less happy to be confined to the home, women-only facilities beyond schools and universities are proliferating. In Kingdom Mall, a shopping centre, men are forbidden to tread on one floor, where nail salons and hairdressers flank clothes shops. On Thursdays Riyadh’s zoo admits women only. Curves, an American gym chain, has found favour by offering its facilities to female fitness fanatics unencumbered by their men. The new trend means more jobs for women too. In the Luthan, female porters, cleaners and IT staff cater to the guests’ every whim.

But it is not plain sailing. Some Saudi clerics have campaigned for women-only gyms to be shut down; one preacher declared that sport could cause women to “lose their virginity”. Women are still controlled by their menfolk, since perceived transgressions can besmirch a family’s reputation. Women are banned from driving, so they still need a man to take them to their ladies-only exercise classes. A male relative must give a woman permission to attend one of the country’s all-female universities.

Some say that ladies-only locales merely entrench segregation. But the rules against mixing are being challenged. In the more liberal city of Jeddah, on the Red Sea, unrelated friends of both sexes discreetly flout the law by dining together. As more women go to work, offices that once had separate lifts and rooms are becoming more integrated. And reformers note that when the women of the Shura council, a consultative body, paid their respects to King Salman last month upon his accession, for the first time they were allowed to mix freely with the men in the royal court.