Tuesday, April 11, 2006

women & men are equals .. in everything

You may have heard this a dozen times before. And you may think to yourself; well, what is it of new, that I can add to this never-ending arguement between the two genders?

To answer your questions, I will only demonstrate an example at how men still think inferiorly of women here in Oman in a very personal matter.

Someone I have known for a very long time now, told me of something that very much displeased me to the point of almost going nuts. He told me that he had participated in a career fair at some private college here in Muscat to represent the oil company he works for. The situation was that he had encountered a couple of women, who, in his perception were only there to mock him, rather than looking for a potential job.

His interpretation was that one of the young women insisted on applying to the company even after he had thrown at her every disadvantage of the company and how it is to work in the fields for a women. Yet, she still barricaded down the obstacles of what he imposed upon her psycholigically. At the end of all that, he tells her to go and check with another company's booth because 'they' don't hire women in oilfields.

Needless to say, our 'friend' here had committed a number of mistake on his part.

He had treated them unrightly, even though he argued (with me) that it was a company policy not to provide jobs for women in oilfields because there would be a fear of sexual harrassment complaints. His interpretation lead me to one main conclusion, that as he was employed at that point in time as a representative of the oil company, that gave him no right to put down the women's application in that rude manner. Not to mention that he did not point out to them the full statement but he finished it at the point of saying 'we don't employ women in oilfields', which leads me to another point, that citing that quote means that he gave the women the impression that company has sexist policies although it employs women in other departments (another thing he neglected to point out to them).

In the end, I gave him the full fledge remark that he was biased and that he could've at least taken their job applications, and had they not met the company's standards they could have written back to them a regrettence letter.

He told me that his company wasn't professional enough to write back regrettance letters.

I rest my case..

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oooooooh, i SO have a comment here. ive been reading ur blog for days, but always left with nothing useful to say, but here i wanna shout out and yell.
for starters, i have to say that ur 'friend's' attitude is not surprising. Men, always have and always will give themselves the upperhand to treat women badly or dismiss of them. Sometimes it happens involuntarily and sometimes it happens on purpose, like what happened with ur friend. but the problem with your friend personally is that he has no ettiquete, people skills or respect for women. If his final defend was "my company does not hire women blah blah blah" HE needs to make a change, the world is developing and OMAN specifically, is progressising really fast, and if he, a man from our own nation, our own public, takes a stand against us in such a caveman manner, then it is really sad, because he is obviously uneducated and ignorant. We need to make people like him extinct, because they are the ones who are stopping oman and its pple from moving forward.
FYI, we have a Fire Safety College facing the airport, (a college to train students into becomming fire men) and every term 5 girls enroll. Now, if we had pple like ur friend working in higher education, god help the nation, and we will always be labeled as the 'third world'.

Give my regards to your friend.

Sleepless In Muscat said...

Rasha:

owwwwwwch! ;p