DOI: 10.36347/sasjm

Pages: 125-134

For job applicants, exclusion from employment in oil companies in the GCC region may happen in one of two stages, either the job interview or the pre-employment medical examination. This study investigates the latter scenario. The primary goal of the project is to investigate the possible discrimination against women and older age job applicants during the pre-employment medical examination. The design is cross-sectional study using secondary data. Setting: preemployment medical check-up at Qatar petroleum medical centre in Doha, Qatar. A total of 2462 individuals aged from 20–55 years (1872 male and 590 female) who attended the pre-employment medical examination in 2012. Main outcome measure is the fitness status (the rate of rejection of work during the pre-employment medical examination) exposures; gender and age of the job candidate. The results shows that 3.8% of males are unfit and that 3.7% of females are unfit. The p-value of the Chi Square Test = 0.889 > 0.05. This result means that the relationship between gender and status is not significant. Even after controlling for the effects of potentially confounding factors, whereas non-significant inverse associations were observed in men. There were generally no significant associations between the outcomes of the preemployment medical examination and the gender or age of the job applicants. These results suggest that occupational health professionals who are in charge of the pre-employment examination in oil companies in the GCC region do not exclude candidates from job offers because of their gender or age.