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.
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”
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.
“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