New Zealand’s transport authority said on Tuesday it would adopt gender-neutral signs after a 7-year-old girl said it was “wrong and unfair” to suggest only men could work on roadside power lines.
Zoe Carew spotted a “linemen” hazard sign — to warn drivers about workers repairing or installing electricity and telecommunications cables — when she was en route to her grandparents' house last month.
She took issue with the sign because “women can be line workers” too, which she wrote in a letter to the head of the New Zealand Transport Agency, Fergus Gammie. “Why does the sign say ‘linemen’ when the people working on the lines may be men or women?” she wrote in the letter.
In a letter of reply posted on Twitter, Mr. Gammie said authorities would replace old signs with new ones reading, “line crew”.
