Are women so bad at parking their cars?
Today I an article in the Daily Mail, entitled "Women can't park" caught my eye.
Being a woman, I get a little tired of being beaten over the head with comments about women's inability to drive / park etc. But that's not really my beef here. I'm not going to argue whether this is true or not. It's probable that, overall, men can park better than women. They have better spatial awareness which makes them biologically more adapted to parking.
But it amazed me how easy it is to mis-represent statistics to say whatever you want them to say.
Is the differential really that much?
Apparently some people will change their route, just to avoid manoeuvring the car into a parallel parking space. Personally, I'd favour it, as there's no one to open their door onto my car!
The Daily Mail article states that "twice as many women avoid parallel parking as men will admit to". In reality, the number is 25%. That means 75% of women DON'T avoid parallel parking. Compared with 89% of men.
And that's assuming that a man will admit to it...something tells me that men are less likely to admit it! But even if these are accurate figures, I'm somewhat heartened by them. The differential between women's and men's parking abilities is not as much as the media would have us believe! Yay :-)
Men and women are different, and each gender has their strengths and weaknesses. I say vive la difference!
Do you avoid parallel parking?
What's your parking like? Do you avoid parallel parking?
We'd like to know your experiences.
[image: http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk]
