Gender neutral road signs: here women warn about roadworks

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The men on the street signs must go – that is what the Green National Councilor Manuela Weichelt (55) demands. “It seems that the discussion about equality and gender has so far gone without a trace beyond the signaling,” she says.

In fact, other countries are already a step — or a road sign — ahead. Blick shows what solutions other cities and states have found.

In 2020, Finland replaced all old signs with gender-neutral variants as part of a road traffic reform. Instead of men you now just see neutral figures. However, the signs were mainly replaced for reasons of road safety – because they were weathered, difficult to see in the dark or mounted too low. So gender neutrality was introduced.

Not so in New Zealand, where gender-neutral signs were introduced after seven-year-old Zoe Carew wrote to the transport authority with a complaint. She thought it was “wrong and unfair” that the sign indicating work was being done on power poles only said “linemen” – when both men and women can do this work. The agency promised to write “Line Crew” on the signs in the future, tweeting that “great ideas can come from anyone, even seven-year-olds.”

In our neighboring country Austria, women on road signs have long been part of the streetscape: in 2006, there were 2000 road signs with female pictograms in Vienna. Since then, traffic light men and traffic light women have also been at the traffic lights – since 2015, there are also gay couples. And men are also less stereotyped: the signs for chairs for parents with children show a man with a baby in his arms.

The Berlin “Ampelmännchen” are cult. Traffic light women have also existed for about 15 years in other German cities such as Dresden, Cologne and Bremen. Frankfurt and Cologne wanted to create even more diversity and placed light signals at homosexual couples.

Even in the Indian metropolis of 12 million inhabitants, Mumbai, there have been traffic light women since 2020. This is expressly to promote gender equality. India ranks 112th out of 153 countries in the World Economic Forum’s WEF Gender Equality Index. Yet – or precisely because of this – there was also criticism of the traffic light women: the money could be better spent on promoting real equality in society, it sounded on social media.

In Sweden, the male pedestrian pictogram was supplemented in 2009 with a female figure. Three years later, however, this turned out to be too “sexist”: her breasts were too big, the skirt too small. Three years later, the signs were therefore replaced again: now the pedestrian wears a long dress and has flatter breasts. (sf)

Source:Blick