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Female drivers have long been the subject of ridicule. But a Chinese shopping centre recently sparked controversy when it pushed the joke a bit too far by creating a special, super-sized parking spaces for female drivers.
The facility features bigger-than-normal parking spaces - clearly for all those ladies who simply can’t manage any tricky manouevres on their way to the mall, reports Shanghai Daily.
Bays have extra lighting and the colour scheme is pink and light purple. There are also specially trained female parking attendants to guide drivers into spaces.
Wang Zheng, an official at the Wanxiang Tiancheng shopping centre in Hebei province’s Shijiazhuang city, said the car park aimed to address women’s ‘strong sense of colour and different sense of distance.’
The spaces are ‘one metre wider than normal parking spaces,’ Wang said, adding that the mall had ‘installed signs and security monitoring equipment that corresponded more to women’s ‘special needs.’
Although mall staff insist that they are intended to make parking safer and more convenient for women, plenty of netizens have deemed the move sexist.
The four pink-coloured spaces on the B1 level of Wandu Centre on Xingyi Road, feature the image of a woman, similar to the ones used to designate restroom doors, on the floor and the walls behind them are to be painted pink for easy identification.
Men are obviously not allowed to use these spots, but strict action won’t be taken against those who do, at least not at first. “Whether the ladies-only spaces will be properly used still depends on public awareness,” said mall employee Li Ming.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first mall to incorporate ladies-only parking spots. Similar spots are already in use in some malls in South Korea, Germany, and China’s Hebei Province.
The existence of these parking has raised a very pertinent question: Do these spots suggest that women are worse drivers than men?
“Isn’t it a kind of discrimination against female drivers,” a netizen asked on Xinmin.cn. “Some men may be less skilled at parking than women.”
Some people have suggested that wider parking spaces should be made available to amateur drivers of both sexes.
“We have noticed these online comments, and we want to emphasize that this is not a kind of discrimination against men or women drivers, but rather a way to show kindness and respect to women,” Li Ming insisted.
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