Officials in Seoul, South Korea will paint almost 5,000 parking spaces throughout the city pink, indicating they are for women only. The proximaty of the spaces is designed to help high heel wearing women navigate Seoul, which would boost employment mong women and encourage them to leave the home sphere.
But many wonder if this approach to leveling the playing field for men and women actually does more to set men and women apart. The tact is reminiscent of affirmative action (which, ideally, will become obsolete), critics of which claim it lowers standards for minorities and perpetuates separation. But in the case of the pink parking spaces, the vehicle for equality–the equalizer, as it were–is is invasively visual, as opposed to policy carried out behind closed doors.
It's hard to criticize someone when they try, and Seoul mayor Oh Se Hoon certainly seems to want to affect real change. But South Korea ranked 64 out of 93 countries in the most recent 2007-08 Gender Empowerment Measure of the United Nations Human Development Report Office. This heel-friendly initiative seems to come more from a place of imitation. There is an understanding of the ideal of the developed world, but a circumvention the cultural thought shift that gets you to that ideal.
