Beach resort denies domestic workers’ attire policy is racist

A version of this article appeared in the web edition of The Daily Star on July 25, 2019.

BEIRUT: As beachgoers flock to private clubs along Lebanon’s coast to take advantage of the summer sun, one club’s dress policy targeting maids has stirred controversy online.

A recent post by Sahar Mandour, a regular at Beirut’s Sporting Club Beach, went viral. It brought attention to a form given to clients upon entry regarding the attire of domestic workers accompanying their employers to the club.

The resort required clients to sign a form, titled “Helper Dress Policy,” agreeing to their maids dressing according to specific guidelines.

The document features a picture of a woman dressed in above-the-knee shorts and a tank top, suggesting that maids should not wear anything more than that - such as burkinis, long jeans or long-sleeve shirts.

The paper warned that in case of a breach of the regulation, the signee and the maid would be asked to leave the club without a refund.

In the post’s comment section, Mandour argued that “in Sporting [Club], the migrant worker is under the kafala of Sporting’s owners.”

She added that through these policies, the management was trying to “reclaim the kafala authority from the people she lives with, choose her clothes for her and impose the look they think appropriate of reflecting the Sporting image.”

Walid Abu Nassar, one of Sporting Beach Club’s partners, told The Daily Star that the policy was “taken out of context completely” and that “many families come to the club with maids.” Abu Nassar said the policy had been recently introduced because of the increasing number of maids coming to the club without appropriate swimming attire.

“The shorts and T-shirt dress code is because there are many maids who feel uncomfortable wearing bathing suits in front of their employers. I think this is a very reasonable request,” Abu Nassar said.

“This is a beach club - we don’t expect receiving anyone who hasn’t come to swim,” he added.

The post also included a story about Mandour’s friend, who witnessed an Indian woman being mistaken for a maid and thus refused access to the beach club.

“There are many incidents with locals or foreign people who don’t abide by the code,” Abu Nassar said. “If the person came not wanting to wear a swimming suit, they got rejected.”

A string of reactions on social media have been calling for a boycott of the club in light of its policy, with dozens of online reviews left in the past week, calling out the Sporting Club for its “racist” and “discriminatory” policies.

Sporting has “discrimination and endemic racist practices regarding skin color, nationality and dress code, and mainly directed against foreign female domestic workers,” Lea Telyani, a reviewer, said in a review this week. Maher Kouraytem, another reviewer, said: “I love Sporting; I have been swimming at Sporting for the last 40 years the [one] star is for the discrimination and racism toward people of color and housemaids. Your reply shows arrogance! And lack of manners!”

Abu Nassar expressed belief that such claims were a paid plot targeting the reputation of the beach club, calling it “just a claim that was put forward by someone and it wasn’t addressed accordingly.”

This was due to the fact that Sporting Club is “an easy target and the club most written about in international papers,” he added.

Sporting has faced other online criticism recently. Seven months ago, in reply to a review left by a client complaining about being denied entry, Sporting Club replied by saying, “We understand you hating us. You can only love Sporting when you feel you belong to this eclectic community of like-minded people. Sporting Club is certainly not for everyone.”

The Daily Star contacted a series of beach resorts along the coast to inquire about their swimwear policies for domestic workers.

Hisham Khalil, resort manager for Beirut’s Coral Beach resort, said that maids were welcome as long as they paid entrance.

“If they only want to sit at the restaurant, no problem, they can wear whatever they want, but if they need to swim to take care of children in the pool, they have to pay and wear appropriate swimsuits,” Khalil said. He said burkinis were forbidden at Coral Beach but declined to comment further on the reasons why.

Policies regarding burkinis also differ from club to club.

In Jbeil, at the EddeSands resort, any type of swimwear is permitted. Yara Younes, assistant manager of the marketing department, told The Daily Star that its pool policy permitted domestic workers and everyone else to wear anything they wanted, as long as it was safe and clean swimwear. Younes said the resort often received maids and that their attire at the pool was mostly decided by their employers, not the facility.

“As a resort,” she added, “EddeSands has no problem with maids swimming” and its policy doesn’t cover the attire domestic workers must wear when not swimming.

At Al Mandaloun Beach Club in Dbayeh, the age requirement is 18, but other than that, manager Dany Kachouh said there were “no objections about the nationality or race of their clients” as part of entry requirements. Regarding its swimwear policies, Kachouh declared that the club had “no specific rules” and people could wear whatever they felt comfortable in, including a burkini.

Other venues either declined to comment over the phone or their management couldn’t be reached after repeated attempts.

The controversy over domestic workers’ access to beach clubs and the dress policies they have to follow in order to enter is not new in Lebanon. Backlash over the same issue surfaced in 2010 and in 2012 when the then-Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud issued warnings to beach clubs about their pool area policies. Abboud released a circular condemning any discriminatory behavior toward clients, in an attempt to make up for the lack of anti-discrimination laws governing the issue.

A 2018 Human Rights Watch report said Lebanon had 250,000 domestic workers, coming mainly from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, India and parts of Africa to provide household services. They often face discrimination and abuse, and are often excluded from labor law protections, the report said. 

- Additional reporting by Jacob Boswall