General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Israeli airline can't make women move seats for religious reasons, court rules [View all]Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)Your second point is pretty easy to deal with. The proportions in the population don't matter. The number of "male only" and "female only" seats could be in proportion to the ratio among air travelers. More precisely, the question would be how many air travelers want sex-segregated seats. I'll confess to some stereotyping here: My guess is that, among Orthodox Jews who object to such scandalous "mixing" of the sexes, the women have many fewer opportunities to take positions in business or government that would involve flying. If that's so, then an airline trying to accommodate this belief would presumably have more "male only" seats.
The first question is harder. If the airline can find a man in the gender-neutral area who's willing to move, that would solve the problem. Otherwise, my inclination is to say that the woman's right to travel outweighs the men's right to travel in a particular way, because the former is more fundamental. Maybe the airline could give the men-only purchasers the option of getting a full refund or rebooking to a different flight, in either case without the fee that's normally imposed.