India’s largest budget carrier, IndiGo, is the first airline to trial a feature that lets female passengers book seats next to other women to avoid sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with a man in a move designed to make flying more comfortable for female passengers, according to a CNBC report.
The airline’s booking process is fairly standard except for the seat map which highlights seats occupied by women with the color pink. This information is not visible to male passengers, according to the airline, CNBC reported. IndiGo did not immediately respond to CBS MoneyWatch’s request for comment on the new feature.
I would rather not sit next to a fat person if i had the choice
Sorry bro :(
If the seats had more space like they used to a long time ago, nobody would care. I blame the airlines.
You can apply thus logic 90% of bullsbit we face on daily but people preferto chimp out at each other instead of you know… The megacorps and their owners who treat working people as property and customers as brain dead idiots
I wish this existed but for avoiding having to sit near children.
Unfortunately, kids can’t go in the cargo hold. Something about needing air and warmth.
Overhead?
The next feature they are adding is allowing female passengers to sit closer to any bears on the flight.
Do Indian men have a reputation for being inappropriately forward with women? There was a meme that read “every app is a dating app if you’re Indian enough”
Have you like, ignored every second piece of information coming out of india the last decades?
They have a terrible issue with misogyny, there are countless stories of rape and other forms of assault on any kind of women (and girls). Indians, foreigners, none are safe, even with men accompanying them for protection. One or two guys can’t do much against a rape mob.
India is probably the first country I would warn a woman away from if she were looking for vacation destinations. Followed by islamic countries.
Yeah my sister went to India a few years back by herself and while thankfully nothing terrible happened to her, she said she would never go back. Just walking around she said the streets are majority men and they are not shy about staring at any woman (especially someone who was clearly a foreigner). Of course, parts of the trip were cool but definitely not the place to be travelling alone as a woman.
Mm idk about that. Yes there is a lot of violence against women in India. Generally, the Indians flying are not gonna be the ones doing that. Secondly, there is a lot of violence against women all over the world, it’s not just an India thing. Hell half the US political system is trying to give women the death penalty for the consequences of being raped. Or just for deciding they don’t want kids.
Not denying violence against women is an issue elsewhere too, but you would be hard pressed to find such a staggering density of sexual violence, in rather public areas, committed by groups of men for little to no provocation other than a woman being in the wrong place.
Now I am not saying all Indian men are rapists of course, but there certainly is evidence of a system wide, cultural aspect creating and enabling this behavior in a way rarely seen elsewhere.
Yeah I mean I can agree with the second paragraph for sure
I dont know the statistics off the top of my head, I’m just wondering how it measures up considering the number of people
But you’re right. Especially considering what’s just happened this week
“Inappropriately forward” is a very polite way to put it. I feel like at least once a month there’s a new story out of India about a gang rape or something.
To be fair India has the biggest population on earth, like 5+ times US population. Per capita statistics would be more interesting here.
With a topic as sensitive and biased against the victims as this, it’s hard to get accurate data - see https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/rape-statistics-by-country
Others commented about misogyny etc. in India miss the fact that India is (a) not a monolith & (b) flights are too expensive for 80% of India’s population (yes, wealth disparity in India is that bad). So the men on flights are less likely to grope women than let’s say a man on a train.
I asked my Indian colleagues about this, and they said they’d use this preference for space (not purely safety). One of them also said men smell worse than women so she’d prefer a woman next to her.
You could look up the gulabi gang. It’s a group of women who fight to protect other women from violence.
Edit - I think it’s best if we listen to Indian women speak on the problem. The first time I heard about the gulabi gang and why they exist I was horrified.
Do Indian men have a reputation for being inappropriately forward with women?
That’s a very friendly description of their reputation.
I feel rather conflicted about this feature.
On the one hand, I really am against any of these I don’t want to be near men/women/brown people/minority, bit on the other hand, Indian men are the worst when it comes to showing respect to women. This ranges from reading the news on gangrape (reading any article you can assume “India” and be right about 60% of the time) to my wife walking on the street being followed by groups of Indian guys who apparently just never learned how to behave around women.
Everything going ok India?
I’ve been on long flights where I wished there had been designated seating for introverts. But then I considered the implications of packing all the extroverts together in one place nearby and thought better of it.
So basically introvert are like the Boron control rods inserted into the crowd to prevent the extroverts from going critical.
Nice. I had been using the analogy that an introvert at a party acts as a sacrificial anode consuming corrosive extroversion until they are utterly exhausted. But I like your take on it!
Wake up babe, India mentioned on lemmy
only 5 more years before they’re a Lemmywide superpower
The airline’s booking process is fairly standard except for the seat map which highlights seats occupied by women with the color pink. This information is not visible to male passengers, according to the airline, CNBC reported.
What’s to stop a man from claiming to be female to see the map of where women are sitting, and then booking an adjacent seat themselves?
You pick your seat after the booking process, where you have to enter your details which does include sex. Even if you enter it wrong just to pick a seat you won’t be able to enter the airport because they check that at the gate. Whether you are the same person whose ticket you are carrying.
I was thinking first would be the fake booking to find where the women were sitting, then switch browsers/clear cookies/whatever and book with the real details.
Yes but men wouldn’t be able to book those seats unless all the other seats are taken.
At least that is what happens on the bus seats here.
It’s really sad that it’s come to this, it’s really bad over there just like here.
Just like “here”, with “here” being where?
Honestly I think in most cases segregation is just not the answer.
The more far away we become based on fairly arbitrary characteristics, the less there is opportunity for a meaningful dialogue that would change the status quo around the issue.
On a practical side, I wish there were proper passenger safety measures and procedures against harassment. A man is trying to do that to you? Record it and report to the crew immediately, and let them deal with the perpetrator and call police on the ground when applicable.
I get what you’re saying, but we don’t fix the issue of men sexually assaulting women, especially in a country that has such profound issues with this like India, by forcing women to remain vulnerable.
If allowing women to avoid being seated next to men on flights reduces the chance of sexual assault from taking place during flights, then I am all for it.
It just needs to be understood as a harm reduction technique, not the solution to the overall societal problem.
This is like saying cars shouldn’t have seatbelts because it isn’t discouraging people not to crash their cars. Seatbelts don’t solve this issue, they just reduce harm. Think of this airline’s decision as implementing a sexual seatbelt for women.
It just needs to be understood as a harm reduction technique
In politics, this WILL BE the solution because a half-measure ‘solves’ it.
You put it into words perfectly. Thank you.
My concern is that the same men, frustrated at being unable to do this on flight, will do it somewhere else anyway. Also, some could be pissed off by this measure just enough to have a negative shift in mentality towards women (see incels that are driven by alientation). So does it really significantly reduce harm? I’d love to see numbers if anyone has got them.
This is a terrible take.
If he’s saying “normalize people being next to one another so anti-social nutjobs can get over themselves instead of being violent” then I can see where he’s going. It’s like the “co-ed bathroom” craze we had for a while.
I’m not sure whether it’ll help aggressive incels actually talk to gurls like people instead of sublimating from “I can list all the dinosaurs” to “you frigid ho” themes, but it could place other comfy male-company people in range or just someone burly to slap the actual shit out of someone who steps outta line. Equality has two sides.
I think either that solution or the segregation or the actual fix to the issue, they’ll all take a lot of emotional growth, though; and we lack the people to help us do that here, let alone in places where misogyny creeps ever closer to the default.
I think it’s terrible because the take treats women as things that defuse incels. Like sacrificing some women is worth it. Feel gross and dehumanizing.
I’m not ever saying women are dispensable tools in this fight (something you imply I said) or that we should “sacrifice” someone - the safety of every person is hugely valuable - I’m just saying that going separate is not gonna make things safer in the long run. There are other factors at play here that will show up, and we should not strive for knee-jerk solutions.
I doubt that separation alone is gonna help much, and I’d love to see comprehensive evidence for or against my take, if any exists. I want to see what is the best evidence-based solution that would actually improve safety of everyone.
If anything, I want to make sure as little women as possible are ever victims of such accidents, I’m just concerned over whether this is a best approach.
You just speak about women in a dehumanizing way that removes agency. It feel gross. Reminds me of doctors from the 90s that said we need studies to tell if inserting IUDs causes pain.
I think that it’s not always just about harassment, but sometimes just wanting to be left alone?
Buy entire row! Wtf
Okay but then men are allowed to fart openly and take our shirts off in the no-women section while they drink chamomile tea and read thought provoking books about how they are okay just the way they are.
Are men allowed to buy a ticket to not sit around nude farting men
Yes, it’s called business. They fart fully clothed.
I don’t see the issue here. Most other indian transport has female sections. That is a normal part of public transportation there.
They do not “segregate”. Its not like the whole plane is split into male and female zones. They just saying “Hey, if you feel more comfortable sitting with women, we got you.”
I would probably not chose it on purpose, but i can see, how it can be a more relaxed experience for other women.
“They do not segregate, all they do is segregate”
This meant IndiGo Air and their new seating policy.
You don’t have to make a fundamental discussion about it on how you perceive and generalised indian society.
How about “we let private companies segregate in whichever ways they want!”?
SINCE WHEN IS CREATING SAVE SPACES FOR WOMEN “SEGREGATION”??!!!
India is a country where you have to be careful not to look directly at men on the streets! Not to mention when you can’t move away for hours.
Sometimes I find the rampant Misogyny on lemmy really disturbing.
Yes but I find all this both racist and sexist. Not all men in India are creeps, even if may be a rampant problem. Shouldn’t they instead try to punish the weirdos?
Of course and in an ideal world we wouldn’t need save spaces for women. But we don’t live in an ideal world and while not all men are creeps, still too many are.
I don’t think I don’t know any woman who wasn’t at some point in her life sexually harrased and/or assaulted. All over the world. And as long as the situation is like that, people like you, who feel offended or “segregated” by female safe spaces are part of the problem.
Yes you, crying “Not all meennn” are part of the problem and why the world isn’t safer for women.
Not to sure(feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), but afaik Theres a quite big amount of rapes and sexual assaults happening in India so not being forced to sit next to a creep may be a good thing.
