Put the Brakes on Women-Only Parking Lots

I'm all for helping women stay safe in a dangerous world. But do female-only facilities really support women's security? Or do they infantilize women and patronize men? Here's the perfect example of this misogyny disguised as feminism: The brand new women-only pink and purple parking lot at the Wanxiang Tiancheng shopping center in Hebei Province, China.

Wider parking spaces for those clumsy female drivers! No pesky numbering for non-mathy brains to remember! (Just look for the cartoon animals.) And can't find a parking spot because you're nervous and have poor spatial perception? Look for the South-Korean trained parking guides! Brought to you, no doubt, by the same folks in Korea who created women-only parking spaces. These guides "use graceful body language to bring pleasant feeling to [the] customers," according to the lot design manager, Mr. Wu of Tiencheng Entreprise Group, who was quoted by Wall Street Journal (WSJ) blogger Sue Feng. Feng also noted: "While some say [the parking lot] is a waste of space and unnecessary, some say it’s an 'act of civilization,' especially from a feminist point of view."

Absolutely, if by "feminist" you mean "not feminist." While I believe that most people involved in this project probably had the best interests of women at heart, the parking lot provides too much of a venue for propagating noncontextualized, sexist data like this (from the same WSJ post): "The lot offers wider parking spaces especially designed for female drivers, who tend to cause twice as many collisions in parking lots than in other places, according to insurance company data."

I would have liked to have seen a specific source for this. What I've often read is that statistics show men are generally worse drivers overall than women. Yet we don't see any "men-only" highways. If they neglect to provide actual sources and contexts, pundits can find statistics to support just about any views. Therefore, the floating stats should be taken with not just a grain, but mounds and mounds of salt. If the insurance companies have found this, and their math is correct (and we all know that insurance companies are scrupulous and competent), maybe women do drive worse in parking lots. That doesn't justify citing this fact -- and building a parking lot because of it -- without considering analyses that indicate men drive worse at higher speeds.

This women-only parking lot focuses attention on stereotypes and relatively arbitrary statistics about women. And it chooses to "protect" women by segregating them. Instead of creating all-female subway cars (like those in China and Japan), we should concentrate on educating, chastising, or disemboweling people who commit violence or harassment of others. Women-only taxis (such as in Mexico, the U.K.,  and Kuwait) send the message that misogynistic men cannot be educated or reformed, and therefore the only solution is to squirrel the women out of sight. This sounds similar to one of the rationales behind the hijab and other Islamic coverings: men can't control themselves, so the women need to hide.

Photo credit: SebastianFritzon