BaddestReligion t1_j9chm5v wrote
Reply to comment by BiffBanter in Gritting routes are ‘sexist’ says Cambridgeshire highways chief and ‘must change’ by Bald__egg
Its basically salting the roads in the winter, but its rock salt mixed with little rocks.
Individual-Schemes t1_j9eh46k wrote
And why could that be an argument for being sexist?
kindsoberfullydressd t1_j9em18i wrote
They prioritise routes used for commuting over smaller rural roads, which seems sensible, but actually isn’t.
This article explains it better than I can.
Pyranze t1_j9etk5u wrote
TL;DR: most accidents that result from snow actually occur on pavements and cycle paths (not necessarily "rural" roads), which are disproportionately used by women.
Torugu t1_j9etu9d wrote
>And so the Swedish gender equality initiative team began to explore
whether snow clearing was sexist. Sure enough, they found the routine of
clearing snow typically benefited men over women.
What's that? The society-for-finding-things-that-are-sexist investigated whether a thing was sexist and found that the thing was sexist? Colour me shocked.
kindsoberfullydressd t1_j9euejh wrote
Something which they thought couldn’t possibly be sexist, and got data to back it up, which eventually saved the government lots of money.
What’s the issue here?
Kali_404 t1_j9euwmq wrote
They seem butthurt that knowledge can be investigated and found through logical applications. They may not have much practice with it to understand.
thzmand t1_j9g10xq wrote
Knowledge is good. But that salting was not sexist. Words have lost all meaning at this point.
ultramatt1 t1_j9g2f4l wrote
Ok how about this, “the implementation of road salting disproportionately benefits men over women” better?
thzmand t1_j9g37at wrote
How about "they salted commercial roads before rural roads" since that is clearly the most descriptive and the only one free of inference.
mycatistakingover t1_j9hc6jo wrote
I believe the investigation/test was done with the explicit motive to check if there was gender based biases affecting the system. It was an audit the local government was conducting on themselves to question the status quo of how cities are run. A system doesn't need to be sexist in intent to be sexist in impact. If a lot of systems like urban planning and road cleaning were put into place at a time where it was only men making the decisions, don't you think there may have been blind spots? And doesn't it make sense to go looking for those blind spots because by definition you don't know where they are unless you look?
thzmand t1_j9hwyol wrote
You people....never stop....like evangelical Christians that think Monster Energy has satanic messaging. This can arguably be a public safety issue for pedestrians, but it is certainly not a gender issue. And even if it is a gender issue that doesn't make it sexist in any way shape or form. Unless of course anything that disproportionately impacts women is sexist. In which case, affirmative action is sexist, and pregnancy is sexist, and breast cancer is sexist. Of course that term isn't helpful to describe patterns that affect genders differently, which is why nobody uses it that way.
mycatistakingover t1_j9i0qaf wrote
Frame it as a public health issue if you want, I really don't care. There is an argument to call affirmative action racist, but pregnancy and breast cancer are biological processes, not rules/systems created by society. No one is calling them sexist. There are plenty of issues in society that disproportionately hurt men that need to be resolved too and until there is an alternative term that is well known, I will happily call the draft and handling of men's mental health sexist too. Why can't we say that gender affects people's quality of life in different ways and try to address that? You don't need malicious people to make a certain demographic's lives worse.
NestroyAM t1_j9f07kp wrote
Are you also mad at astronomers discovering something new about celestial bodies?
memcwho t1_j9f7co0 wrote
Was there a figure for the increase in road accidents due to lack of gritting?
kindsoberfullydressd t1_j9fcsz0 wrote
I don’t think there was a increase in road accidents. It’s not that the main roads weren’t gritted, it’s that the smaller paths were prioritised.
nowhereisaguy t1_j9g9cup wrote
I see. So women are bad at walking in snow. This is my takeaway.
mycatistakingover t1_j9hcwg9 wrote
Did you even read it? The investigation found that women were more likely to trip chain (i.e. take multiple stops on their daily journeys that required exiting the car). E.g. leave work, pick up dry cleaning, pick up kids from school, drop them off at extracurricular activities. They were also found to do more walking in the vicinity of the home. More time spent walking means greater chances you will slip and fall.
nowhereisaguy t1_j9hdgrv wrote
‘Twas but a joke
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