Academic’s fury after airline staff call her Miss
AN academic has accused an airline of sexism after check-in staff called her ‘Miss’ instead of ‘Doctor’.
After her experience at the check-in desk, Dr Siobhan O’Dwyer, who has a PhD, hit out at Qantas on Twitter ‘to highlight the everyday sexism experienced by professional women’.
But her post, which was liked by 8,500 people and re-tweeted more than 1,000 times, sparked a heated debate online, with many attacking Dr O’Dwyer for being ‘arrogant’. She later said she wished the post had not gone viral and she had been left feeling ‘exhausted and depressed’.
The Australian, a senior lecturer in ageing and family care at the University of Exeter, tweeted on August 31: ‘Hey @Qantas, my name is Dr O’Dwyer. My ticket says Dr O’Dwyer. Do not look at my ticket, look at me, look back at my ticket, decide it’s a typo and call me Miss O’Dwyer.
‘I did not spend eight years at university to be called Miss.’
The post prompted more than 4,000 comments, including mocking pictures and videos. One Twitter user said she was being ‘arrogant’, while others pointed out she wasn’t a ‘real’ doctor. Another accused her of having ‘first world problems’.
‘Your tweet is exactly about ego,’ one man wrote. ‘How many male doctors write tweets to Qantas complaining they get called Mr and not Dr? If they did, they would cop exactly same the responses as you.’
Another added: ‘You’re an academic doctor. Get over yourself. Ivory towers vs saving lives. No comparison. Pretentiousness vs real action. Again no comparison. You have some ego MISS O’Dwyer.’
Several academics tweeted support for Dr O’Dwyer. But Dr Mel Thomson risked inflaming the issue further by writing: ‘I’ll be damned if some trolley dolly gets to decide what honorific I get called.’
Yesterday Dr O’Dwyer declined to comment when contacted by the Daily Mail.
A spokesman for the Australian airline said: ‘We are extremely proud of our cabin crew who respectfully serve our customers day in and day out and play a vital safety role.’