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Park Space ONLY for women

2006/06/15 7 comments

By living almost 2 years in Germany I have come across many differences between Germany and Spain (my home country). Needless to say almost all of them are in favour of Germany… Education, respect, tolerance, etc.

That is why I had to take a picture when I found this:

For Women

It is from a real parking in the middle of Stuttgart (Germany). I think those of you who don’t understand german won’t find it too difficult to figure out that Für Frauen means For Women. I guess if I were a woman that would annoy me, yet on the other hand when you’ve been looking for a place to park for more than an hour you tend to forget about sexism… Actually, it was quite funny cause this spot was wider than the regular ones (the men ones I suppose), but the female owner of the Twingo didn’t manage to park it properly. By the way, once the car is parked, how the hell do they check if the driver was a man or a woman!!?
I’ve looked for similar things accross Internet but it turns out there are none! All I could find are the typical jokes about women parking abilities. So we are looking at the first female park space of the world ;-) Is it me or they always get the better stuff?

EDIT: As some people pointed out these are for security reasons. You can read about it in the german wikipedia. The translation is:

In some underground parking structures there are special parking spaces for women; they are often in especially visible locations, usually near stairs and elevators or near to security officers, and are usually under especially good surveillance by video cameras.

So it turns out there’s nothing funny about them…

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  1. Name

    There are things like this in the United States. Some larger department-type stores — I believe Target is one — have spaces reserved for expectant mothers. This is not legally binding, like handicapped spaces are, so non-pregnant/non-women park there all the time.

  2. Jamie

    It’s because it is near a door, ever hear of the corrolation between dark places and rape…duh.

  3. ViTo

    I don’t know where you live (the States I guess) and how often women are raped in parkings there, but I can assure you that doesn’t happen in Spain and neither does it in Germany.

    Yours looks like a logical reason though. I’m thinking there is something going wrong in a country where you need to put park places next to a door in order for women not to get raped. I guess our realities are just different…

  4. Jamie

    I knew you were going to say that. Women are raped everywhere, not just the States. Don’t be such a typical European snob. Our realities aren’t different, you’re just purposely ignorant of the human condition.

    I’ll tell you my experience in ’99 with Europeans. On vacation, I had to go to the “hospital” for “help” because I had developed an tooth abcess. Now, this abcess was hidden way up in my gums so no infection was visible. I was in terrible pain. I was given no antibiotic, no xray, nothing. Just generic pain pills and a slap in the face in the form of being told that I should have taken care of “this problem” before I had gone on vacation. Excuse me, but I do go to the dentist on a regular basis for checkups. Now that I think about it, I didn’t even get a real diagnosis.

    In the states, you would have gotten xrays, a real doctor instead of some nurse, a genuine diagnosis, antibiotics and a SMILE. And if you can’t pay, you don’t. But people would still take care of you regardless of your race, creed or country of origin. You see, we’re actually friendly here despite our supposed “Blade Runner” -like reality….and I’ll even take that over your pompous European bullshit any day of the week.

  5. Luc

    You sure sound friendly, Jamie.

  6. ViTo

    Jamie, rape is a problem everywhere. (here you have some stats: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita )
    Yet I don’t see how this would be a competition between Europe and the States. I still think there is a serious problem if you cannot go to a dark place (like a parking) without being affraid of getting shot or being raped, and that is equally true if you are in the States, Europe or India.

    Sorry if this is more of my pompous European bullshit…

  7. myshele

    As an American woman living in Europe (Scotland) I feel safer here than I ever felt in the US (no guns!), and I have much better healthcare than I ever had in the US. I also find people to be a LOT less rude and arrogant than Americans!

    No idea whay there’d be special women’s parking, though…. Was it near a women’s health clinic or something? Odd….

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