On a day when womanhood was celebrated globally, an educated young woman of the city was revealed to have masqueraded as a man to get a job. The bizarre turn of events became public after 26-year-old Sreesanth, marketing manager of an electronics firm, met with an accident at Kaudiar in the city on Saturday morning after ‘his’ bike collided against an autorickshaw.

Sreesanth, who was thrown off his bike, was bundled into an autorickshaw and taken to the Medical College Hospital here. At the hospital, all hell broke loose after the doctor asked him to take off his shirt. He screamed and howled saying he won’t expose his torso. The doctor got suspicious and sought the help of a female nurse to conduct a full-body check. The nurse confirmed that ‘Sree’ was not a ‘he’ but a ‘she’.  But the young woman even refused to get admitted in the female ward to be treated for a mild fracture and it was only after her parents were called in that she agreed. Though Sree could not be contacted, her relatives said that it was the bitter experience that she had while job-hunting that forced her to change her identity. “She found that there was a big bias against women when it came to selecting people for managerial posts,’’ said a close relative. “Women were summarily rejected citing flimsy reasons.’’

It was then that she took a photocopy of her SSLC book and changed her name to Sreesanth without arousing any suspicion. Hailing from a middle class family, Sree has two elder sisters who are both married. Her parents tried to get her married too but she wanted to get a job. 

In fact, not a soul in the office of Masters Electronics here had any suspicion that the youthful Sreesanth, a native of Kollam, had been putting up a neat disguise every day. “I can’t believe that Sreesanth is a woman,” said Hemanth, a technician of the agency. “He was quite impressive in his work and had already received quite a few salary hikes in two years.’’