Female signals on Melbourne crossings make mockery of women’s movement

WHAT’S next? Traffic lights that look like those silly family stickers on the back of cars? A plan to have half of crossing lights showing women is a joke, writes Susie O’Brien.

PLANS to make the traffic light crossing people gender-neutral is the silliest idea I have ever heard.

It’s political correctness gone mad. First we had restrictions on the word women (because it contains the word men), moves to ban terms like Miss and Mrs, rewriting of classic books and fairy tales to remove gender stereotypes, and now this.

What’s next? Traffic lights that look like those silly family stickers on the back of cars with dogs, cats, tall men and short women and kids with hockey sticks? I mean, we wouldn’t want to leave anyone out, would we?

More: Green woman crossing lights backlash

Haven’t these people at the Committee of Melbourne got anything better to do?

Turning the crossing figures into females won’t create one single job, break down one single barrier or help one single woman.

Jena Gotziaman, Kayleigh Rockett and Krysti Gotziaman beneath the lights. Picture: Jason Edwards

And yet the Equal Crossings Initiative is proudly kicking off its plans to install 10 female pedestrian figures at one of Melbourne’s busiest intersections. The idea came from the committee’s Future Focus Group and is designed to challenge “unconscious bias”.

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I am a woman and a proud feminist who has crossed thousands of roads in my life, but I have to honestly admit I have never seen the crossing men flashing at me and felt left out, subjugated or objectified.

Affordable childcare and the gender wage gap are higher priorities, says Susie O’Brien. Picture: Getty

Lord Mayor Robert Doyle hit the nail on the head when he suggested such a scheme was more likely to bring about “derision”.

Clearly, Doyle is more in touch than the Future Focus Group.

The problem is that if you spend too much time and money obsessing about irrelevant stuff like whether the crossing figures are men or women, then people don’t listen when you talk about things that are really important.

You know, things like the cost of childcare, the gender wage gap, the lack of women running our companies, and the problem both women and men have accessing family-friendly work.

The Future Focus Group says it is committed to developing “the leadership that our city needs” and promoting “creative ways of thinking”.

Some of their ideas are pretty good, such as free trams in the CBD, Open House Melbourne and Eleos Place, a youth homeless crisis accommodation centre.

Putting skirts on traffic light crossing figures isn’t one of these good ideas.

It’s silly and absurd, and makes a mockery of the whole women’s movement.

@susieob

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