Larger Parking Spaces For Women: Long Live Inequality?
Be it compliment or insult, the facts remain that a shopping center in China is offering women drivers bigger-than-normal parking spaces to accommodate what its backers see as their “special needs.”
Aimed to “address women’s strong sense of color and different sense of distance,” the policy of the shopping center in Hebei province’s Shijiazhuang city is controversial to say the least.
The spaces are “one meter (about three feet) wider than normal parking spaces and the mall installed signs and security monitoring equipment that corresponded more to women’s needs,” says Wang Zheng, an official at the Wanxiang Tiancheng shopping center.
Regardless of the chauvinism which certainly appears to be there, one fact remains clear; driving in China is notoriously perilous and more than 73,000 people died in car accidents in the last year, which according to police statistics, boils down to over 200 fatalities per day!
Is this an attempt at fair play or gender-based scorn? One could easily argue either point of view. It is as difficult to believe that all women are born with the same inabilities for parking a car, as it is to believe they enter this world with the same degrees of intelligence and aptitudes for particular subjects.
What about Chinese men who don’t park well? Does this mean they should don women’s clothes and drive around incognito for the sake of maintaining this silly new parking space regulation?
It does seem rather absurd even though one can suspect that the motives behind this novel situation were well intentioned.
But then again, isn’t that what they also say about what paves the road to hell?
Think about it.
How do YOU feel about this?
(Link)
By MDeeDubroff on 10-01-2010
Comment by wayne
January 11th, 2010 at 4:19 am
you know what they say "Women drivers, no surviors"
Comment by Donthitmycar
January 11th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
As a female, I should take offense to this story. But honestly, I would like larger parking spaces.
Why?
I love my car.
I worked my ass off for my car.
I am a broke college kid who still has 20k in loans to pay off, therefore I cannot pay for repairs to said amazing car.
I have no problems with parking, it is just the other people who cannot park that I am afraid of.
Comment by Parker-in-train
January 11th, 2010 at 2:21 pm
I think this is good idea. If those parking slots are for everyone to use, not just women. I have seen pretty bad parking my self and some of them are done by men some by women. So it could be good just to use big slots if your uncertain about your parking skills.
PS. I'm male and nowadays have less problems with parking than when I got my license.
Comment by ephemeria
January 11th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
No question about this one. This is worse than making fat people park farther from the shopping mall so they are forced to walk more.
And no, I've never been a particularly good driver myself. But when I was a sixteen-year-old girl, I could parallel park my family's minivan better than my father — although never as well as my mother.
Great article.
Comment by @Fekona
January 12th, 2010 at 11:01 am
get over yourself
Comment by karthik
January 18th, 2010 at 4:06 am
yea..
Comment by JDillinger
February 11th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
I'm sorry but Asian women are the worst drivers in the world. I can usually spot a female Asian driver from hundreds of yards away. Driving around Hawaii is the worst during tourist season. I'm not saying there aren't bad drivers across the board but Asian women really need the extra parking stall space… It's not even a chauvinistic thing, its just in the spirit of making parking lots safer places. If women want things "fair" why do they have lower standards of physical strength and skills to become a police officer or military service women or a fire fighter?