News Asia
Seoul Reverses Gender Policy By Removing Women-Only Parking Spaces
(CTN NEWS) – SEOUL – 14 years after being implemented as a kind of safety for women, women-only parking spaces in Seoul, South Korea, are being eliminated.
After a wave of violent assaults in underground parking lots, the women-only spaces were implemented in 2009.
But, according to city officials, these slots will be converted to family parking spots because they are no longer required.
Opponents claim that their removal is merely the most recent illustration of South Korea’s anti-feminist policies.
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Women-Only Parking Removed In Seoul
When she can find them, 55-year-old Chung Eun-jung utilizes the female restrooms, saying, “I feel safer when I use them, because there are not too many hazardous people close by.”
She added that she always locked the door as soon as she got into the car since she was aware of frequent news reports on crimes in parking lots.
According to her daughter, she was unhappy that her mother would feel less secure.
Park Young-seo, 27, said, “It seems unusual that they would purposefully get rid of something that helps women feel safe.”
“They don’t matter that much. There are simply a few spots reserved for women in the parking lot, not the entire thing.”
In Seoul, the largest city in South Korea, car parks with more than 30 spots were required to reserve 10% of their places for women. Of the 16,640 public parking spaces, little under 2,000 was set aside for women.
So that ladies wouldn’t have to trudge through dark basements, they frequently stood close to building entrances.
According to government statistics from 2021, rape, sexual assault, and harassment accounted for more over two-thirds of violent crimes perpetrated in the city’s parking lots.
The woman-only areas were first implemented by Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, who is now changing his stance. He stated that “considering families” should be done now.
Pregnant ladies or those traveling with children will have access to the new family seats. The city council ruled that women who did not match these requirements would not be permitted to utilize them.
Such a move, according to opponents, contributes to the anti-feminist attitude that has permeated South Korean politics in recent years. More and more men in South Korea claim that laws favoring women are discriminatory.
The current administration is attempting to shut down its gender equality ministry and has deleted the term “gender equality” from its school ethics curriculum.
Although the Korean Women’s Association’s Oh Kyung-jin is upset that the areas are being eliminated, she is more worried about the general trend.
She claimed that the government was attempting to advance anti-feminist ideas, and that these regressive policies were now influencing local governments.
Cho Young-jae, a man pilot, believes that the women-only areas should be eliminated. The 34-year-old claimed that “these spaces discriminate against guys.”
These days, parking lots are blanketed in surveillance cameras, so walking an extra 100 meters won’t make you any less safe. South Korea has faced opposition to women-only parking spaces, which were initially implemented in Germany in the 1990s.
Critics claimed that because some are larger and longer, they contributed to the perception that parking is more difficult for women.
They are larger because it was thought that women in South Korea who handle most of the childcare would value the extra room to get their kids into and out of the car.
The city authorities will begin converting the sites at the end of March.
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