A woman's lot
Last week, Agence-France Presse reported that a shopping centre in Hebei province had built a women-only car park.
You might assume it did so out of concerns for the safety of female motorists (to protect them from lurking muggers and rapists) but that appears not to be the case. Official Wang Zheng was quoted as saying the car park catered to women's 'strong sense of colour and different sense of distance'.
The car park - in Shijiazhuang city's Wanxiang-Tiancheng shopping centre - has been painted in a fetching palette of pink and purple and the parking bays are one metre wider than usual.
Furthermore, 'signs ... that correspond more to women's needs' have been put up and female parking attendants have been trained to help guide drivers into those whopping great parking spaces, around which extra lighting has been installed.
Sexism is alive and well in Hebei, it seems - no doubt the feeble-minded females of Shijiazhuang will soon be told they can no longer knit or prepare dinner while they're behind the wheel.
