The Lady of the Crosswalk

This is a story I heard on the news this morning:

The small town of Fuenlabrada, just outside of Madrid, is “taking a novel step in the struggle to achieve equality between Spanish men and women”. They are updating their crosswalk signals and signs to be gender equal. Now half of the stick figures on signs at pedestrian crossings will have skirts and ponytails. Also, the stick figure on the crosswalk lights will flash between being a man and a woman. The person goes from the traditional stick figure man, to a woman with a skirt and long hair. There have been mixed opinions: while most think it’s a good idea, some say they never thought of the stick figures as necessarily being male, and others do not like stereotyping women as wearing dresses. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6206084.stm

Like some of the people interviewed for the article, I also have never thought of the stick figures as being male. Though I’m sure, if you’d asked me directly, I would have said that the stick figures were male. Personally, I’m not too sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, I have to agree that I’m not sure we should be women should be defined as only wearing skirts. Then again, how else are you going to differentiate between male and female when using stick figures? If most people are like myself and don’t consider the figures to be male or female but merely a person, do we even need to differentiate?

Then again, it’s always a good thing to question the norms. If nothing ever changed, how would we better ourselves? If these signs make people think about why things are the way they are, then that can’t be a bad thing. Why not a woman? Maybe the signs should not be seen as a statement of equality but rather a trigger to question our feelings and attitudes on the subject. Consider larger issues such as the glass ceiling, pay inequity, etc. They’ve even got me to spend time writing a post on it!