Female Traffic Lights

As I write this post the world is celebrating International Women's Day. I think it's a fantastic initiative to get women to celebrate their success and what it means to be a female in this crazy world. However, I don't think there needs to be a special day where we get out the pink balloons and put female faces on every TV screen. I believe this kind of thing needs to happen daily as women should constantly strive to bring each other up and support the fantastic work we all do every single day. We need to instil this encouragement in our young women and show them it's okay to be the confident, powerful and strong little girls they are. Being bossy isn't a weakness and you shouldn't feel embarrassed if you're taller than the boys.

I love female empowerment and have spoken about this countless times on my blog. There is nothing better than strong, determined and talented women coming together, but I do think a few things have gone a little far. We are often so prepared to make political feminist statements that we lose sight of what's truely important.

Take the new pedestrian traffic lights in Melbourne for example.

If you haven't heard about it, brace yourself. The Committee of Melbourne is behind the change where an initial 10 sets of pedestrian lights will be swapped from the typical "male" walking man to a "female" in a dress. The committee's chief executive Martine Letts said having only green or red silhouettes of men discriminated against women.

"The idea is to install traffic lights with female representation, as well as male representation, to help reduce unconscious bias," she said.

Now I don't know about you but I think this is a bit of an overreaction. I don't think having female traffic lights will help to reduce any kind of male bias. When crossing the street I'm not offended by the male silhouette and becoming aware of the whole situation made me mad more than proud to be a woman. I really do think there are a lot more important things we can be doing to help gender disparity.

I like the idea of removing gender from this entire situation and only having the colours represent when it is and is not okay to cross the road. But, I want to know what you think. Should we have females in skirts telling us when it's okay to cross the street? Please let me know.

#ashleighdwan #beyondthestory #journalism