介绍:
Xiaohua: A shopping mall in Northeast China's Dalian city has rolled out wider and bigger parking spaces for their female customers. The spaces, outlined in hot pink with a sign saying, "Women only," are located by the road and close to the mall's entrances. So do you think that is actually thoughtful or thoughtless to set up female-only parking?
Heyang: Oh, I think no matter what it is, it is credibly sexist.
John: Thank you for saying that. I am glad you said that.
Heyang: It’s reinforcing that’s stereotypical view on women being very bad at driving, and may cause more accidents, which is completely false when we look at a few studies done before.
John: It’s not completely false actually. So what we find in the US as well as in Europe, in Germany, what they found is that men are involved in more accidents total, total accidents. But what happens is that number one men are involved more in accidents with vitalities or causalities, so people die or they get injured. However, women are involved in more minor accidents, such as scrapes, bumps, slight dents and things like that.
Heyang: So I think there could be an argument for in the parking lot when there seems be a place where is high risk for scrapes and accidently touching another car, that kind of thing. But I think this more or less seems like a marketing stunt, or this shopping mall is trying to send out the message that we are female friendly, but in fact I still think that it is just not sending out the right message. And I don’t think girls need this kind of extra treatment, so to speak, for, you know, getting parking a car correctly.
Xiaohua: I think it’s really difficult for me to picking a side here. Because on the hand we do have studies showing that, as John says, also there is another study showing that many more accidents in parking lots caused by female drivers vs by male drivers.
John: Why not making all the parking spaces larger?
Heyang: We don’t have that much space.
John: You build up, right? So we are talking about parking lots. What about parking garages? Come on, I think it is very sexist. Number one, we assume that all women are bad drivers, that they don’t know how to park their car. We have a similar case in Germany, where in one area, of one city, they had male-only parking spaces. It was only two, in one specific parking lot, but they said, they used the same argument that men are better parkers than women, which is not always the case. So I think number one, in general, it is important to recognize the strengths and the weaknesses of both sexes, and accept them for what they are. Look, we are all different. That’s just what it comes done to, and there are differences, there are general differences among the sexes. But I think that in terms of, we still need to treat people with the same opportunities, we still need to give them the same chances, and so you know what these spaces doing is automatically assuming that just because you are a woman that you are gonna hit another person’s car. And they are close to the exits. I mean come on, so what, women are not lazy? They shouldn’t have to move?
Xiaohua: They have high heels.
Heyang: That could be why.
John: Take off your high heels, damn it.
Heyang: Also I think what was kind of an argument for them, initially I had, was that I think actually the parking lot can be a very dangerous place because… well, the reason why women always carry pepper spray…
John: Is it legal? In China?
Heyang: Ok, in China maybe. And then so there are potential dangers in parking lot, but not really from parking. That was why I thought, oh, they want this thing. But in the end, it turned out it’s not. And it’s really just…
John: No, I mean if you look at a German study from 2003, only one of one thousand crimes in parking garages was actually sexual in nature and they found that molestation and attacks on women occurred no more often in parking garages than any other places. So you know parking garage is the same as anywhere else.
Xiaohua: So it’s a fake, sort of conception that parking lots are more dangerous.
John: Right, they might seem more dangerous, because there is less people around. But bottom line, they just happen as much. I mean also you have to remember that a lot of crimes of molestation, of robbery, of theft in the road, these are almost always a crime of convenience. And if we’re talking about the six-floor parking garage, come on, who is gonna just wonder around the six-floor parking garage?
Xiaohua: Back to, you know, the larger parking lot question. On the one hand, I am really angry because I think it’s sexist. And also, note that, I’m a very good driver (Heyang: Me too.) and I’m very good at parking. But on the other hand, I have seen numerous examples of horrible female drivers.
Heyang: And horrible male drivers too.
John: I think the thing is especially in China. I think there is a very, very strong conception that women are bad drivers. Because they are actually driving safer than most of the male drivers, which means that everyone thinks that everyone is an unsafe driver, so they act that way. And there is at least in Beijing a fairly low incidence of accidents, but then if you have someone who is driving safe in the area that anyone else is not driving safe, it actually make things more dangerous because our predictions are all messed up.
Xiaohua: So instead of singling out the female, we should actually promote safer driving.
John: Exactly, and better parking course for everyone.
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