Cross-posted at My Viennese Adventures.
There is something that I love about the Vienna metro system (besides the fact that it is supremely fast and reliable).
Take a look at this:
What do you notice?
OK, first, the graphic design is fantastic. But what else?
The ‘old’ and ‘injured’ people are represented by male figures. The pregnant individual is (unavoidably) a woman, and the person carrying a child is also female.
So far, so typical.
Most public signage on Earth seems to follow this pattern. The generic individual is by default male, except when they are connected with child-rearing, when they magically become female. Never mind that women also get old and break their legs, or that men are perfectly capable of toting around a three-year old on public transport.
The difference with the U-Bahn is that you will see just as many of these signs as of the one above:
The preggers woman is still there, but who are those folks with her? An old lady! An injured gal! And, most radically, a dude with a pesky kid!
It might seem insignificant, but the signs that surround us are constantly sending us messages about who we are, and our place in society.
These signs are a small gender-victory, and they put a smile on my face!
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Kate Shea Baird works at Women Without Borders in Vienna, specialising in the counter-radicalization of violent extremists. She has a BA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from the University of Oxford, and an MA in European thought from University College London.
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Comments 33
oliviacw — November 18, 2011
My husband is a stay-at-home dad with our young daughter, and he would love to see more awareness of men taking care of babies! We've been collecting a (long) list of places that don't have baby-changing facilities accessible to men
zoelouise — November 18, 2011
Is it purely coincidental that this is Vienna and the older dude looks like Sigmund Freud?
Or maybe the fact that I think that says something about my childhood...
Toby — November 18, 2011
I agree that this is really cool, of course! But I feel uncomfortable and alienated by your assertion that pregnant people are "unavoidably" women. I am a man who could get pregnant. I don't expect the sign itself to take trans people into account, but I DO expect better from someone analysing this, someone who's supposed to be progressive about gender.
Cocojams Jambalayah — November 18, 2011
You asked what people viewing these signs noticed (first). The first thing I noticed was that the adults were Black and the baby was White (kinda).
Well, you did ask and I'm just being honest.
fss — November 18, 2011
The third image isn't representing "injured," it's representing "blind."
http://www.blindenzeichen.at
» U-Bahn Epicene Cyborg — November 19, 2011
[...] These signs are a small gender victory. @8:50 am Comment (0) [...]
Colin Purrington — November 19, 2011
This is fantastic. It's interesting, though, that there is no icon for the morbidly obese. I haven't even seen such icons in the United States. But it's a matter of time, I think.
Hugh — November 19, 2011
May I (with, I admit, a small touch of malice) make a comment about something that has bothered me before on this blog? Your very sensibility for, and objection to, gender stereotyping is as much in the eye of the beholder as it is in these images. You start by saying that the injured/blind person is a man and the person with the child a woman, but why should that be so? Just because the injured/blind person has short hair and seems to wear a jacket, and the person carrying the child has long hair? In all fairness I admit that the person with the child really seems to wear a dress, something still firmly associated with female attire, but why that other one should necessarily be a man is beyond me. Women with short hair and jackets are not at all uncommon. In this instance you criticise stereotypes with regard to gender and social role, but you do so by first making a stereotypical judgement about gender and physical appearance (dress and hair), which you then highlight precisely by asking for (or in this case: being happy with) a reversed confirmation of it in the second row of images.
Elisabeth Maddix — November 19, 2011
What I find funny is that the male with the baby is frowning. No one else has any mouth at all. So men might take care of a baby, but they will not enjoy it.
Besides that, the author isn't sexist. She might not, personally, think of the long hair person as a female, etc, but she knows that a majority of society would view this person as female.
I think an important part of sociology is being able to perceive majority viewpoints.
Byron — November 20, 2011
The first sign was already gender balanced; 2 women, 2 men.
It's the 2nd sign, with 3 women and 1 man that is unbalanced.
Two rules either had hard gender requirements (reguardless of self-identification, it takes actual female anatomy to get pregnant) or most typical, easily understood (in most species with parenting, it's primarily the female who takes on the role, with humans hardly an exception). The two others convey conditions that are always gender-neutral, but with two images already portrayed by women it's only fair to balance them by using males for the final two images.
Why is the 2nd, gender-unbalanced version a good thing, for anyone?
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