Society

Mall plans parking lot just for women

By Chen Jia (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-05 07:08

Zhu Rui, a 26-year-old Beijinger, absolutely loves the idea. It shows that women are being respected and cared for, she says.

She is talking about a novel concept - an exclusive car parking lot especially designed for women, with their preferences in mind.

The Wanxiang Tiancheng shopping center in Shijiazhuang, capital of North China's Hebei province, plans to design the facility with bigger parking spaces and women-friendly color schemes such as pink and light purple.

It also plans to employ specially trained female parking attendants to guide the women drivers into the parking spaces.

"It is a great idea to design wider parking spaces. It means I won't have to put up with impatient male drivers who keep honking behind me," Zhu, who has had experience driving a car for the past three years, said yesterday. "I hate all those jokes about women drivers!"

Wang Zheng, an executive at the shopping center, said the parking lot was designed keeping in mind a woman's "strong sense of color and different sense of distance".

The parking spaces are one meter wider than normal, and will have signs that correspond more to women's needs, he said.

"Construction of the parking lot is in the final stages and it will open soon," Dong Yuntao, a manager at the shopping mall, told China Daily yesterday.

In China, more than 10 million women drive, starting much earlier than their male counterparts, Cai Na, an official with the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau, wrote in a recent article outlining the psychology and behavior of women drivers.

"The number of women drivers is increasing as they are playing a more important role in family," Cai said.

"They are also less prone to rash driving than male drivers. For example, only 3.5 percent of traffic casualties were caused by women drivers in Beijing in 2005," she said.

"Women are more sensitive and cautious when they drive. Women seldom figure in drunken driving incidents," she said.

Tina Tang, a 28-year-old who works at an airport in Chengdu, said: "It is just like joining a gym exclusively meant for women - parking in a male-free environment is less intimidating, and I won't feel pressured to compete with men who may appear to be stronger, faster and better - even if they are not," she said. "I will perform better in an all-women driving environment. I hope Chengdu too will develop a similar parking lot exclusively for ladies."