Can All-Women Cities Solve Saudi Arabia's Productivity Problem?

What would a city made up of only women be like? It’s a question that people have pondered throughout history -- sometimes with high-minded intent, sometimes for cheap thrills. Herodotus wrote of the Amazons, female warriors who were said to enslave men to reproduce; Hollywood gave us the sublimely terrible 1958 science fiction movie Queen of Outer Space, in which Zsa Zsa Gabor plays a Venusian scientist on an all-female planet where some American male astronauts have been forced to crash-land. (The men struggle against their mini-skirted oppressors, prevail, and presumably get lucky.)

Leaving aside religious and educational institutions and less formal back-to-the-land “intentional communities” founded by women for women, all-female communities on a large scale have been the stuff of legend. But now, Saudi Arabia is going to take women-only cities out of the realm of myth and make them a reality. The vision is for several such cities to be built over time, starting with an industrial development of 5,000 in the province of Hofuf, a project advanced by a group of Saudi businesswomen, according to The Guardian: