I've seen in several places in Germany that there are parking places which are reserved for women, in one such parking garage there was a sign saying that they are reserved due to "safety reasons".
What is the reason that such parking places exist?
How is it (if at all) enforced?
The main reason that women parking places exist is that parking areas are often considered as creepy. At some time they are completely deserted so you hear only the deep humming of the fluorescent tubes, every step (with high heels) announces loudly your presence (and that you are a woman, by the way), there is often bad lighting, few exits and both cars and the pillars are allowing people (in your vivid fantasy) to watch you without being seen. In short, eerie, scary, sinister.
It depends on the parking area if there are any legal means to enforce the reservation for women.
Once the owner admits that the StVO (the German road law) is valid (This is automatically the case if there are no effective borders to prevent access in contrast to e.g. multi-storey car parks), the owner cannot prohibit the usage by men. But if the owner has their own terms (as being said, all multi-storey car parks or workplaces with their own parking places) the current interpretation of the law permits the owner to exclusively reserve places for women and according to a decision in 2011 (LAG Rheinland-Pfalz, 2011-09-29 10 Sa 314/11) it does not discriminate against men.
The current state is that is not really enforced, but culturally accepted to give women a more secure feeling. These places are very near to the entrance, have good lighting and camera supervision. It is really more about a secure feeling, there is no statistical indication that attacks are prevented by those places nor that even attacks in parking houses are more common than in other places.
The actual usage is that it is impolite to use them as men if there are free places left, but once the places are full, they will be used, too.
Those parking places are designed so that woman do not have to walk alone in the night through the whole parking area. Especially parking decks can big big with several floors etc. and in the evening they are not very frequented and light conditions are more dim and dusky. Those places are usually close to the exit of the respective parking area (first floor, close to the vending machines, elevators etc.). They exist to minimize the chances of assaults on woman. However, this does not mean that we have a high rate of assaults on women here in germany. Rather, it displays the demand for very high security and - my opinion - it is primarily for people to feel safe. If it is a real improvement - I do not know if there are any numbers. But often it is important to feel safe for the society.
