Believing in the right of women to change the character of Iraqi society, and with the decline of Islamist violence in the country, an Iraqi woman and journalist, Hind al-Bedairi, opened the first coffee shop in Baghdad with only female wait staff.
The coffee shop is open to families but also to single men, provided they maintain proper rules of etiquette. That means that if a man flirts with a waitress he is asked quietly to leave the coffee shop and not to return again.
Some clients have called the coffee shop "the empire of women."
Source: Al-Rafidayn, May 2, 2010
