Thursday, August 20, 2009

Mr. Asmaa

I was recently given a prominent leadership position in an Islamic organization in Toronto. Alhamdulillah. The amount of emails I have to sift through per day is mind-boggling, but I'm surviving and loving it.

I'm going to be honest: my leadership style is slightly dictatorial. I'm a stickler for organization and professionalism, and I communicate this clearly in all of my correspondences with volunteers and board members.

I recently overruled a decision that was made by one of the core members, and communicated this by stating more or less "this decision has been made, thank you." Afterwhich a volunteer replied, calling me "Mr. Asmaa" (jokingly, I assume).

It made me laugh at first, and frankly, I took it as a compliment because it meant I was professional and straight-forward.

And then it got me to thinking, why do we automatically associate clarity/straight-forwardness with masculinity? There are a lot of reasons that I don't feel like elaborating on right now. The main point though, is that now you may refer to me as Mr. Asmaa.

Thank you.

7 comments:

hajera said...

you're welcome Mr. Asmaa.

p.s. i miss working with you :(

abdul said...

i dunno....perhaps the past stereotypes (not that I agree with them) portrayed males as logical and rational beings. Most mathematical genius were males and math is a field of logical and rationality, so maybe false past stereotypes crept in and led to males being associated with logic/rationality.

abdul

Anonymous said...

Liked the post very much! I appreciate your wit, humor and criticism. It is stereotype that men are straight forward and honest. I fear proposing a girl whom I like most and hence ended up messy. Where is the straight forwardness here?

Mars said...

Are you available tomorrow, Mr. Asmaa?

Unknown said...

Haj...those were fun times :)

Abdul, I think I'm going to blame colonialism for now.

Anon, thank you. There is no straight-forwardness in matters of marriage. They are muddled and strange. Sorry, I can't help you there :S

Mars, yes I am but I have a conference call at 6pm.

sara said...

I miss you Asmaa. Can you pencil me in at some point?

8 Years Old With Attitude said...

Hey,

Congrats, or mabroook whatever works for you!!!!

Yeah, my mom use to say " Clearly women makes great decisions, but men makes greater decisions."