I took the Dubai Metro last week and it dawned on me suddenly that there are far too many women in Dubai.

Trying to keep my balance while playing a video game on my cellphone, I heard an announcement over the public address system that confirmed my theory. It said that from Sunday to Thursday, the women’s-only compartment will be expanded, from seven in the morning to 9am and from 5pm to 8pm.

The next sentence sent my back up and I looked at the man in front and lifted up my eyebrows: No men will be allowed in these compartments, it said, and for those hapless male species who jump in by mistake from the platform trying to get into a crowded train, there would be consequences.

Whoever thinks that men do not need space when riding the Metro should try taking a train at 6pm on a working day. As soon as the train arrived at the platform and the door opened, I was literally carried inside by the crowd behind me!

Adjusting my shirt, I quickly looked around for a seat and a hefty-looking guy and I eyed one at the same time. We both raced to it and sat on the tiny seat at the same time, and nobody giggled. I had to give up the seat to the guy — though he was much younger to me — as he could not get up.

I tell you, as my high school science teacher would say, I dislike discrimination of any kind. I see this bias in favour of the female species everywhere and I shake my head in despair. The other day, I was standing in a long, snaking queue that never seemed to move, when a scrawny looking security guard came up to the woman in front of me and told her that she could jump the queue.

No glass ceilings

My feet were aching and I shuffled from leg to leg trying not to die from embolism (a fat globule or a gas bubble that stops up the bloodstream if you sit on a long-haul flight or stand in a long queue), when I saw this security guard come towards me and I thought good things were about to happen, such as being told that a new shorter queue would open at the next counter soon.

Instead, the guard went up to the woman who apparently was much fitter than me as she looked like someone who went to the gym a lot and told her to move forward — and she went ahead happily.

All this while I was under the impression that women did not wish to be relegated as a different species and wanted equal pay and status and no glass ceilings and no snide remarks by alpha-sexists in the boardrooms.

I told my wife about this apparent sexism and all she said was that she would like to take a “pink taxi” next time she took a flight out of Dubai. “I don’t have to chat with an over-friendly cab driver,” she said.

This is going a bit too far in pampering the womenfolk, but Dubai has special taxis for them. “Why can’t men have pink taxis, well not pink, but maybe caramel or grey-coloured taxis — and driven by women,” I asked. “Isn’t caramel a bit sissy?”, asked my wife. “And grey only suits George Clooney,” she said.

This ‘women-only’ thing is going a bit too far, I thought. “What’s next? Women-only lifts? Women-only offices (well, that’s already happening in the media sector). There are women-only banks, gyms, swimming pools.

Whoever said that it’s a man’s world!

Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai.