VIENNA — The posters around Vienna's neo-Gothic town hall set tongues wagging: In place of the traditional "Construction Work Ahead" symbol showing a man in pants and helmet, they depicted a ponytailed woman wearing rugged-looking boots and a skirt, and hefting a shovel.
On "Exit" signs, the traditional running male stick figure was replaced by a running woman, this time in high-heeled boots and a skirt, hair flying behind her.
On a sign warning "Beware the Road Is Slippery," the woman carries a little handbag.
The prototypes designed to encourage people to rethink some of the Austrian capital's gender biases, kicked up a kerfuffle of criticism from men and women -- but more from men.
The conservative newspaper Die Presse jabbed at the campaign for being unrealistic, scoffing at the depiction of a shapely construction worker wearing a skirt.
Readers were even less generous. In letters to the editor, men ridiculed the gender campaign as superficial and complained that it was a waste of money. Some women said they didn't like it because showing a woman wearing a skirt illustrated anything \o7but \f7equality.
"This has nothing to do with emancipation," wrote one Vienna reader, Patricia Stocker. "The traditional symbols of a skirt and high heels are ridiculous."
In style, the signs, part of a broader campaign by the city government for what Europeans call "gender mainstreaming," are more Depression-era WPA project than dominatrix. But the debate that the campaign set off laid bare just how touchy gender issues remain in Austria, one of the most socially conservative countries in the European Union.
This is a place where women of a certain age and income still do not go out without a hat and where the opening of the Winter Ball season, complete with women wearing elbow-length white gloves and swirling floor-length gowns, is still something of an iconic moment, broadcast on television.
"The majority of the people with a negative feedback are men," said Sonja Wehsely, the Vienna town council member who pushed the road-sign campaign. "So you see, it's not only about these little symbols, it's about something bigger.... We achieved what we wanted, not only to change the old-fashioned symbols but to promote the discussion about it."
Women's rights activists note that it took a highly publicized controversy before female musicians were permitted to play in the prestigious Vienna Philharmonic -- that was in 1997, more than 150 years into the orchestra's existence.
