Published On:Monday, August 6, 2012
Posted by abg man
Women, a parking menace?
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Women, a parking menace? (Thinkstock photos/Getty Images)
A German town's recent announcement of 'easier parking spots' for women, isn't the first example of sexist parking spots
Most men see a 'lady driver' as someone who uses the rearview mirror to check her lipstick rather than the cars behind, who bats her teary eyelashes at you after ramming into your car from the left side, and - most importantly - as someone who possesses atrocious parking skills. These 'lady drivers' are rampant on roads across the world, trying to reverse and *shudder* parallel park, while men stare haplessly, reduced to mere bystanders. To rid the world of this menace, the German town of Triberg introduced gender-specific parking spaces. The concept is simple, easy parking spots for women, while the difficult parking spots are left for men. Ladies, are you fuming yet? If not, read on...
Triberg's easy parking for women
The mayor of Triberg, Gallus Strobel, is not saying all women can't park, what he merely means is "many also cannot park; Like my secretary. Five times she tried and no success." He says the parking spot is particularly tricky because, it is "...not rectangular, (it is) at an angle to the road and placed between walls and pillars; that makes parking difficult so we decided to allocate them to men." As expected, the move drew the media's ire, and furore on behalf of women world over but Strobel, almost gleefully, told a publication, that he was glad his town was garnering publicity -"I've been on the phone all day, the TV will come. I am happy, and it looks like we've hit a raw nerve in society. It's been a great marketing gimmick. Women can come here and prove me wrong, and while they're at it, they can see the town's attractions."
Hebei Province's jazzy pink parking for women
A 5-star mall in China introduced a parking spot for women painted in bright pink and purple, with zodiac signs instead of numbers to demarcate each spot. Also on the menu, dancing parking attendants - ("Of course, it's not real dance, we just want to use graceful body language to bring a pleasant feeling to our customers, and at the same time show the uniqueness of this parking lot," said the designer of the lot, after someone probably laughed at the description.) Though you might still grant them a nine on ten for creativity, you gotta give them a ten on ten for sexism. "The width of each parking space is around 3.2-3.3 meters. It's wide enough that even when the doors of two neighbouring cars are all fully open, they won't come up against each other," the designer said.
South Korea's high-heel friendly parking spot
The Seoul government was working on Ladies-only parking spot which were painted in - guess what colour? Fair enough, except that it wasn't just women's safety they had in mind. Besides the spots being a few inches wider than the usual unisex parking spots, their USP is that they are "high heel friendly." Therefore, they are modeled after handicapped parking spots, and are much closer to offices and malls. It's almost like the Women's Suffragette and Feminism never happened.
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