Please feel free to comment and add to the views, or email another burning cultural question to undercover(dot)dragon(at)gmail(dot)com.
Why do Omani women get to push to the front of a queue?
During your stay at Oman, there would be some unusual scenes that raise many questions. One of those scenes is Omani women pushing to the front of a queue. Many foreigners who are used to “first come first serve” are astonished and sometimes offended (depends on how many times it happens to them). Since I am a woman, I must say… I don’t complain. It is convenient after all… However, you will find these days that women started thinking that this is their birth right. Sometimes they even start pushing in front of other girls “never happy with it”.
I’m not sure when this phenomenon began, but you mainly see it in groceries and banks. These places are usually crowded and mixed. The act of women standing in a queue between men hovering behind their backs and sometimes hearing them inhaling and exhaling, and being pushed slowly to almost touching the one in front of you is very uncomfortable. Because many Omanis respect their women – holds some truth to it – they started offering women to go in front. (Of course there are the few men that do this on purpose to check women out…)
Others would hope other men do the same to their sisters and mothers.
All I can say is if I need something done at the attestation office in Shatti, I send Ms Dragon while I wait outside. She gets to go to the front of the queue and I avoid 2 hours of a scrum to get to the counter...
