Vienna gives a gender change to its signs

By the end of the year, the Austrian capital will have signs featuring men changing diapers and women riding elevators.

By Mindy Kay Bricker | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

from the March 14, 2007 edition

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VIENNA - On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Gunther Mendel took a break from ice-skating with his 8-year-old son, Tobias, to photograph his goofiest faces, like the one where he rolls his eyes back into his head and stretches his tongue out of his mouth.

"I'm a lucky dad," Mr. Mendel says outside Vienna's eminent City Hall building, the Rathaus. Meanwhile, workers inside the building were trying to make active dads like Mendel, a sign of the times – literally.

In mid-December, the Vienna City Council launched the "Vienna Sees It Differently" campaign, unveiling posters which featured the city's public pictographs – but with gender changes.

Now, those changes are being implemented all across the Austrian capital. By the end of the year, all city buildings will have signs featuring men changing diapers and women riding elevators. This month, the Vienna Public Transport system, which is also taking part in the campaign, will begin replacing old, tattered stickers for reserved seating with updated ones featuring men with babies, elderly women, and disabled women.

"The campaign shows familiar images in an unfamiliar way. We want the effect to be jarring in the best sense of the word," said Sonja Wehsely, the former city councilor for women's issues, at the campaign's press conference in December. "By playing with our expectations, the campaign encourages us to change the way we think, see, and act."

Ursula Bauer, the city's project director for the implementation of gender mainstreaming, says they set out to be provocative and their mission was accomplished.

Though Ms. Bauer says the city has received "hundreds" of supportive e-mails and calls, it "easily" has gotten 3,000 complaints – 80 percent of which have been from men.

Complaints ranged from speculated costs of the campaign, to men saying female pictographs are exclusive to women declaring that skirts represented an "unemancipated" female.

Mendel, however, thinks the campaign is progressive. If he needed to change a baby's diaper and saw the new sign, he says, "I would feel 100 percent integrated." Overwhelmingly, diaper-changing facilities are found in women's restrooms.

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