Why Women Can’t Park

Often the butt of chauvinistic mischief, women’s parking skills have a very bad press. Are women genuinely poorer at maneuvering a vehicle than men or have a few isolated incidences been responsible for widespread ignorant generalisation? Well, statistically more men have accidents, particularly young men, at higher speeds, while more women have slighter accidents such as when reversing so there is some degree of truth. So why would this be the case?
Sport is something which highlights a divide between male and female and this is not just down to physical strength. Men, in general, appear to have better control over motor skills: they have better coordination of their limbs and better understanding of spatial awareness. These are vital skills for achieving at any sport, yet they are not things you can necessarily tie to a person’s sex. There is no physical reason why women should not be just as skillful as men. Certainly the difference in strength is a primary cause for the gap in quality within many sports. Greater physical strength makes men more powerful and faster, giving them an advantage in sports like football or tennis. A difference in skill levels is often very clear though and this ties in with parking a car because it is a base level of control and judgement that determines the efficiency of the action.
Boys are very commonly brought up with pre-concieved ideas of associated activities for different sexes and parents instinctively encourage more playful activities for boys over a longer period of time. Fathers are more likely to join in games and sports and provide an example. A boy more naturally identifies with their father while a girl identifies with their mother. Role models are a huge influence on childrens’ behaviour and this results in them adopting different activities. Boys often end up training their motor skills, coordination and spatial awareness through more physical play than their female siblings. Adolescence is a crucial time for learning and the most influential for development.
Contrasting behaviour at a young age has a big affect on later abilities. This goes a long way to explaining why men might have more success at parking their cars. Motor skills and hand-eye coordination are not the vital factor in parking a car, but spatial awareness is. Good spatial awareness comes from training the brain to predict movement and understand measurements in relation to moving objects. Games and sports are very good for this so boys tend to garner a better understanding from a young age. Later in life men’s abilities might appear like a natural intuition, because their life probably doesn’t involve any more physical activity than female colleagues, but this basic educational foundation from childhood is actually the reason behind their advantage.
Think about how you play with your children and how they play amongst themselves or how you played when you were a child. How does this measure in relation to different sexes? Training muscles and brains while they are still growing and developing is the best way to solidify life skills. So the next time you glide into your parallel bay or you perform a 7-point turn, thank/curse (delete as applicable) the hours of your youth and not your sex.

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