Friday, April 13, 2007

Separate LRT coaches for men and women

Separate LRT coaches for men and women is a new gender issue that hotly debate recently. In my opinion, it is not appropriate as it is difficult to separate the crowd. As we all know, during the peak hour, there is always the situation that women more than men. If this is enforced, some of them may miss their trip. This will be a waste of time. It will be more complicated for the passenger to choose the coach.
On the other hand, what's going to happen with potential tourists especially the mat sallehs? Obviously, they will feel weird with our cultural and if they are in one groups(men and women) it will probably discourage them from take LRT. Malaysia will reflected as a very conservative country and apperently show that we are practising and enforcing the islamic conventional morality. Come on.. we are multi-racial country... Such rule will ‘smear the reputation’ of a city...
What is the root of the problem? Gender sensitivity. The community must be educated to respect each other. Segregation is not the answer. Men are everywhere. Sexual harassment can take place anywhere as well.
Instead of focusing the gender issues and coming up with mind of numbing rules, it would be better to think of ways to educate boys and men on being respectful to women. I think, introduce gender sensitivity at all levels of education, primary, secondary and tertiary is a must!

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