13/05/2015
Men or Women: Who’s better behind the wheel?
The management at a # Shanghai shopping mall
could not have even imagined the hornet’s nest
that they were stirring when they decided to
create special parking spaces for male and female
drivers.
The mall authorities say that their motivation for
doing so, i.e., providing well lit and wider spaces
for women, was just to ensure greater
convenience for their female patrons.
The extra wide spaces for women are marked out
in pink symbols. They are six meters long and
nearly three meters wide, 50 cm wider than
normal parking spots.
Moreover, these spots are close to the entrance
and exit so it would be more convenient for
women, the mall says.
What was perhaps a courteous gesture soon
turned into a debate over sexism and the question
about who was better behind the wheel – men or
women.
On social media in China, the reaction to these
has been very mixed, with some people backing
the initiative and others slamming it as sexist and
disrespectful. The crux of the debate online is
whether men are really better at driving and
parking than women?
According to a research conducted at Ruhr
University in Germany in 2009, men are indeed
better at parking than women.
The research involved 65 volunteers and
concluded that men were much better at parallel
# parking than women. They explained that men
benefit from superior co-ordination and spatial
awareness because their brains can process the
changing position and speed of a car quicker than
women's.
So what do you think? Do women need bigger
parking spaces? Who is better behind the wheel?
