By then, however, other cafes had opened with both male and female staff. Raghda and Rafaa found new jobs, Raghda at Dasoqa, a coffee shop whose name means “ladybug,” and Rafaa at Blink, a community gathering space nearby.

Their parents have caved a little, but fretted a lot. They feared for the family’s reputation as much as for their daughters’ souls.

“Our dad says, ‘What if my family came and saw you here working, making coffee and drinks?’” said Raghda. “‘They’ll see your face!’”

To the sisters, that was the point. Raghda’s hair remains neatly tucked under a lilac head scarf, Rafaa’s under a black one. But their faces — sometimes people still do a double-take when they see them — are bare.

“My face is my identity,” said Rafaa.

It was not only their parents who objected. When they waited for Ubers after work, the young men hanging around the mall often heckled them, suspicious of their uncovered faces and light makeup.

“What are you doing with those guys?” they demanded as the sisters chatted with male friends.

The lack of reliable public polling and free speech makes it difficult to gauge how Saudis view women’s changing status. But one study, from 2018, suggested that fear of social stigma may drive opposition more than personal resistance.

It found that a majority of Saudi husbands approve of their wives working outside the home, yet underestimate how many other men also support it. Telling them that more men actually favored it was enough encouragement for them to register their wives for a job-recruitment service.