Job Discussion Forums

[jm2505]

Having worked in Eastern Asia for so long I decided to give Oman a shot before retiring. It took me 4 months to get my visa sorted - not something I am used to.

Well, this week I read the following article which confirmed what existing teachers had been saying to me - that they were trying to find a man in place of me. (I am female in case you hadn't guessed).


http://www.theweek.co.om/disCon.aspx?Cval=8008

[MuscatGary]

There was an article in either the Times of Oman or the Oman Observer a couple of months ago in which a Government Minster said that female visas would be stopped except for female only jobs. Maybe it's beginning to bite. I'm not seeing any job adverts for teachers which state male candidates only though.

[veiledsentiments]

All the new teachers I've had contact with this year have been female and they had no issues. As always, it depends on employer. No problems at all at SQU and a couple of the private colleges in the Muscat area. This visa issue shouldn't relate to tertiary education... although they have always been leery of 20 something female teachers... but from your post I doubt that is an issue. That said, they have never been eager to hire single females. When I arrived in the country in '88, there were only 4-5 of us in a department of 50... and I was probably the youngest at 40.

The usual time frame for getting the visa paperwork chased down has always been 2-4 months (up to 12 for Saudi Arabia) - especially if you are doing it from outside your home country. If you've been around the TEFL world for a long time, the security clearance can get slowed down too. But, as yet, native speakers are still wanted... though more and more Omanis are returning from overseas advanced degrees and they will be the priority for these positions.

I don't expect this push to stop bringing in female expats to hit tertiary education right away. This is all related to Omanization - to open these jobs up to Omanis... a logical push when you have so many unemployed.

VS

[MuscatGary]

The college I worked in until recently was about 60:40 M:F with a mixture of native and non-native speakers from all over the world plus Omanis, many with Masters as VS has said. The Omani women were all in their 20's and there were four ex-pat women of similar age.

I FB'd a friend today and he told me that the hotels are still hiring Filipinas for barwork so obviously there isn't a blanket ban on female ex-pats.

It is Omanisation at the root but they will retreat when they find out that Omanis can't or won't do many of the jobs. Teaching isn't one of these, they can do it except for writing which they never seem to be able to master themselves. I often wonder how they managed the assessed writing components of their overseas Masters degrees....