"The day a woman becomes president in this country, I'm leaving"

A couple of female inspectors stopped over at our school today. I guess they came from the Ministry of Education or something like that. They made themselves out to be pretty important, anyway. From lesson notes to attendance books, these women requested for all our records from the term. Prior to this experience, I don't think I had ever seen such a nervous group of adults together in one room, in my life. The atmosphere was so tense and awkward for me as I watched the principal and teachers get heck for the mistakes and mess-ups they had made on their records. I hate seeing people uncomfortable, much less, older people. 

Also, you'd think being "ordinary corpers", as they put it, would have meant that we would be given special treatment. You know, maybe they'd go easier on us since we aren't permanent teachers; but that wasn't the case. We were treated no differently. In fact, I was threatened with a query, while another one of us corpers had his lesson note seized and was asked to travel down to their office to reclaim it.

Anyway, after they left and we went back to our staff room, a conversation about 'women in power' ensued. Someone asked, "why do women abuse power?". Another added, "the day a woman becomes president in this country, I'm leaving."

Being the only female of all five corpers, you can imagine how difficult it would have been to win an argument. So, I didn't bother starting one. Not because I couldn't but because I can't defend what I don't oppose. I am all for "girl power" but I had/have to agree with these guys on this one. It is something I had noticed in the past, and for once, in that moment, I think I figured it out. Considering women historically and even biologically, women were never "the head" or placed at the forefront of things. Then things changed and the idea of women being made prime ministers or managing directors was no longer so far-fetched. Now that we've been given the power and freedom we had always lacked, I think we feel the need to prove our capability by doing all we can to assert our power. However, the problem in our country is that several have abused this power. Another one of the guys put it well by saying, "there's discipline and then there's disrespect. You can't be yelling at people older than you or at corpers, as if they were kids". It seems that in this country, we believe that to ensure discipline, disrespect must be enlisted; forgetting that discipline and disrespect are completely unrelated.

My question is this: Can we entirely blame the women? Can't we all relate to that need to over-compensate after being long oppressed? Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that what these women in power are trying to achieve through their strictness?

Thoughts?

PS: It's a town, not a village! :P

Image source: Google