Sri Lankan Airlines, with all the controversial clouds that they they’ve had to maneuver themselves across, ensured that they were the nation’s headlines and the talk on social media after their most
recent stunt.
They upheld International Women’s Day by navigating their UL 306/8th March 2019
flight from Colombo to Singapore with an all-female staff.
Yep, looks like another plane is about to crash…hard.
Let’s examine the underlying pins and needles behind this landmark decision taken by Sri Lankan
Airlines;
Sri Lanka Airlines is playing a bad game, and the playing platform is called ‘Identity Politics’. Identity Politics is a term coined to trademark the ones in political discourse who attempt to segregate people based on group identity such as sex, nationality, race, etc. When you play with ‘Identity Politics’ it’s already established that you are previewing the context (that is in discussion) based on how the surface feels like under your feet; without digging up the ground to find the sickening worms.
When a person recognises that your most important attribute is your sex, is that not underwhelming for an individual?
Is that not indirectly ignoring everything you have attempted to create as an individual by hauling achievement after achievement only to be scrutinized or be praised based on a group identity of yours that wasn’t even your choice to begin with?
Yes it’s underwhelming. Its crap actually.
A person’s characteristics and skill set that attains to the specifics of an occupation should be the first thing that has to be considered in the employment of that person.
So, when an employee decides to prioritize the group identity over personal identity, that employer is discriminating and point blank.
What Sri Lankan Airlines is celebrating is just the ‘women’ group title, not the actual members of it.
They are celebrating the existence of a sign rather than the people who are holding up the sign.
Maybe this variates from person to person, but my opinion is that what I value.
International Women’s Day for is to create an environment where there is an equality of opportunity for women
to attain any occupation of their preference and no cultural or societal stigma would prevent them from doing so. I also understand there is some prejudice when it comes to the employment of women, misogynists exist in the minors but they do exist. Yet creating an environment where hostile employees are FORCED to employ a group of people they dislike will just pivot and exemplify the hostility evaporating from the work environment. It will just make things worse for the already prejudiced women. How you solve prejudice against a sex is by speaking out with enough corroborative evidence to ensure the person in question will be scrutinized; or (if you can afford job
mobility) transfer occupation.
But what our dear airline has done is pull a ‘podi’ socialism on us and establish a quota system. This quota system is not oblivious to anyone in this context; Sri Lankan Airlines ensuring an all-female crew means that they have to have remove a few male workers in order to accomplish this ‘landmark decision’.
So I ask this question from you: we have a situation where the male pilot is much more qualified and more experienced as well, yet for the sake of diversity, by attempting to ensure ‘diversity of sex’ what Sri Lankan Airlines have established is that pulling the plug on males is okay as long as its empowering women?
Maybe the initial male and female crew were all okay with this decision.
Maybe they all came to a consensus to make this happen. But it still doesn’t remove the precedence that the airline has set; that creation of a quota is okay as long as one side is felicitated. But, what it does is immediately
discriminating another group as a consequence.
One cannot empower one group identity without pushing the other group identity down the stairs.
Identity Politics is like playing in the jungle…what the hell are you doing in a jungle in the first place?
A meritocratic work environment is the best one and most rewarding. To ensure women take part in this playing field, as I mentioned before we have to make sure women have the opportunity to be educated and become whoever they want to be.
Creating a quota system or in this case making it a policy that the whole crew is female just downgrades the actual merits of the female passenger crew it is assumed that they only got the position because of their sex rather than their work ethic.
Here’s an afterthought I will leave with you;
What matters first is your character, but if that’s abandoned by god, then go get baptized.