Is there any evidence that map skills are gender related?
I’ve read reports that “spacial skills” are easier for men, according to standardized tests of the the type “Here’s the front view of a pile of blocks; which of these pictures is the back view?”
But would that include 2-D map skills?
Karen Smith on “Why Women Ask For Directions”
I am forwarding the following on behalf of Karen Smith. Karen is a paddler (tripping canoe, wild water kayak, sea kayak, sprint kayak), the owner of Gaia's Garden (a vegan food service), and, as far as I can tell, a wicce of the White Goddess with neo-Buddhist leanings. In refutation to John Winter's examination of testicular navigation which he published on the paddlers' mailing list Wavelength, she says:
John Winters has attempted to prove that women cannot navigate on the open ocean. His analysis is centered on women frequently requiring directions while driving in cities. This bears no relation to their ability to navigate canoes and kayaks on open seas.
Women's navigation is based on the pituitary stimulating hormones FSH and LH. Secretion in sufficient quantities causes the development and continuance of a secondary sexual characteristic commonly known to women as the navicular gynoecium. Since this does not look like a breast, buttock, or other piece of meat, it goes unnoticed by men.
Indeed, the only outward and visible sign of the navicular gynoecium is water retention during menstruation. The reason for water retention is twofold: first, it acts as a protective buffer against dehydration during long open ocean crossings. Let us not forget the horrid fate of dear Duncan Taylor as he drifted off from Mauritius. Second, it changes the body's electrolyte balance to stimulate electrodynamic conductivity with sea water. Quite literally, there is a bonding between woman and water world.
Unfortunately, man has never been willing to admit, let alone examine, this secondary sexual characteristic. The closest investigations to date have involved studies of migratory birds, with conclusions tentatively looking toward the interrelation between magnetic forces and an avian organ situated near the pituitary. One supposes that if the paternalistic medical profession ever turned its attention to the minutiae of the menstrual cycle, rather than write off so many manifestations as hysteria, it might recognize the existence of the navicular gynoecium and its role in electrodynamic bonding with Mother Earth.
We now must look at why women usually prefer to ask for directions most of the time, and why they often need to ask for directions in cities. First, the electrodynamic bonding is not just with Mother Earth; it is with all life, particularly with other women who are similarly experiencing water retention. Communication with others is simply an example of bonding initiated through the same electrodynamic forces which bond women to Gaia.
Second, it cannot hurt to ask for directions, and may help through the gaining of related information resulting from the formation of social ties. A good example is the difference in approach to arctic navigation between Victoria Jason and Don Starkell. Victoria is a grandmother who used her social skills to successfully and enjoyably complete much of the North West Passage. In contrast, the aggressiveness of Don led to expensive rescue efforts and the loss of body parts. Both paddled the same area at the same time, even paddling together one season, yet the woman's efforts succeeded where the man's ended in tragedy. The same can be said for the Hubbard expedition to interior Labrador, which ended in death when Leonis followed his Peter up the wrong river and starved. His wife, wondering how anyone could go so seriously off course, mounted her own expedition, based on forming bonds with aboriginal people of the area, and comfortably completed the route which had defeated her late husband. Bonding with others often makes the difference between success or tragedy, and while the physiology of bonding is based on the navicular gynoecium, the communicative element must be practiced on an ongoing basis.
Third, the process of social interaction among women is not artificially estopped as it is with men, for testicular navigation, rooted in the male endocrine system, includes both increased aggression and, if you will excuse the pun, linearity. Essentially, male navigation is not so much navigation as a random colonization in which a great many males strike out with great determination in random directions, with the net result being that most will fail, but on occasion one will actually arrive at somewhere of interest. In particular, the Franklin expedition, which ended in a mad hatter's tea party as the lead poisoned crew pulled a boat laden with silver dinner services across the tundra, and the many following failed rescue attempts, one ending in cannibalism, come to mind as examples of the growth of the cult of exploration, in which male aggression and single-mindedness in penetrating the unknown are held up as the epitome of voyaging.
Most notably, male explorers who take a less aggressive, more socially interactive approach, are far less testosterone driven, and indeed exhibit considerable evidence of a gonadotropic hormone balance more typical of females. For example, the journals and writings of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, who explored much of the Sind, Arabia and Africa, and who translated the spiritually erotic Kama Sutra and the seminal Tales of a Thousand-and-One Nights, are replete with allusions to his sexual exploration of both genders. One must ask if there was a correlation between his remarkable navigational ability and his gender identification, and if society's promotion of homophobia as part of the ultra-male ethos is contraindicative to Ur based navigation.
Fourth, the reason that women often must ask for directions in a city is due to industrial based toxins commonly present in the urban atmosphere impacting on the female endocrine system. The industrial complex, which is dramatically affecting the global climate, which is spewing toxins and carcinogens in unprecedented quantities, and which is driving thousands of species to extinction, is also debilitating female navigation through the disruption of gonadotropic balance. The industrial complex is male based, and since the patriarchy neither knows nor would care about women's navigation, let alone the survival of Mother Earth, nothing is being done to solve the problem. On the high sea, away from many of the more concentrated pollutants, women's hormonal systems come back into balance; the pituitary stimulating hormones FSH and LH are produced in sufficient quantities to support the proper function of the navicular gynoecium. On the open ocean, away from the towering icons of industrial masculinity, ejaculating their filth into the atmosphere, women are able to navigate quite competently.
Finally, John Winters makes much of happy male explorers who navigated across unexplored oceans to find new lands. I ask, what did they find during their travels: not what they found on land at the end of their voyages, but what they experienced while actually on the water? Aphrodite was born and rose up out of the sea, but Odysseus, who spent the decade following the fall of Troy quite lost, was just another sperm fighting to survive in the great ocean of Gaia's womb. The Nereid's home was the sea, yet Odysseus' crew desperately tried to find a home far from the sea.
Even the patriarchal Christian tradition recognizes the difficulty males have in becoming one with Gaia and her waters. For example, from Psalms: "They that go down to the sea in ships: and occupy their business in great waters; these men see the works of the Lord: and his wonders in the deep. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man: and are at their wit's end. So when they cry unto the Lord in their trouble: he delivereth them out of their distress. Then they are glad, because they are at rest: and so he bringeth them unto the haven where they would be." In this male based mythology men are lost and scared when voyaging onto the ocean, and consider death a release.
Women's relationship with the Ur, with Gaia, with air, earth, fire and water, is not one of aggression and tragedy as it is for men. The patriarchal discounting of female navigation is simply one more example in the present millennium of repeated male attempts at subjugation of the ancient White Goddess, domination of the physical world, and dismissal of spiritual being.
Richard Culpeper, Hon.B.A., LL.B., M.A.
http://www.tbaytel.net/culpeper
“Hour after hour, day after day, far from sight of shore,
We laughed and sang and slept under the hot sun on the northern ocean,
Wanting never to return.”
Kimosippi '95
Don’t know about map reading skills, but have you ever met a woman who could back up a trailer with any skill. I’m not trying to be a smartass, just wonder if that particular skill has something to do with right/left brain.
Guess I’ll start off by saying I think this “Karen Smith” person is full of horseshit mumbo-jumbo.
Anyhoo - about “backing up trailer skills” - I’d say it’s more a lack of practice than anything else. I get this frequently - men trying to be “helpful” offer to do something complicated, not realizing that this deprives me of the chance to learn how to do it myself. Very annoying. I have many quasi-amuzing stories about this sort of thing, but most are off-topic to this thread.
That said - speaking as someone who navigates not only through cities streets but through open sky, I’d say that men and women tend to have different styles of navigation. Men navigate by dead reckoning and women by pilotage (in general - there are many, many exceptions).
In other words, if you ask a man for directions from point A to point B he will tend to reply “Go 5 miles down this road, turn east, go a 1/2 mile, turn north, then it’s 200 yards down the road and on your right.” A woman, giving directions between the same two points, will tend to say something like this “Go down this road until you see the Marathon station across from the 7/11, turn right, go down that road until you see the Blockbuster video store, turn left, and it’s the fourth driveway on the right.” Both are perfectly valid ways to navigate but if you’re only familar or comfortable with one the other set of directions will be incredibly frustrating.
The only theory I’ve ever heard about how this got started was the hunter/gather dichotomoy. Men relied on heading and direction because they pursued game that wandered all over. Women, gathering stationary plants, used landmarks that didn’t move except in things like earthquakes. This also explains why women may be more inclined to ask for directions - you ask the locals about the landmarks because it’s easier than discovering them on your own. If you’re just heading 1000 miles in X direction then do you really care about the landmarks, as opposed to direction and distance?
Both navigation techniques require a certain level of spatial awareness, but slightly different uses of the ability. Most people who use one form of navigation can learn to use the other equally well. Good explorers need to use both.
When I give directions I try to combine both methods, so whoever I’m talking to can pick out what they find most useful.
I’m not sure about innate gender abilities/left brain vs right brain and the rest, but I do know that even someone who isn’t a “natural” at reading maps, following or giving directions, etc. CAN learn how to if s/he really wants to.
Umm, a man’s pituitary gland produces lots of LH and FSH too. They are necessary for sperm and testosterone production.
I think you missed the hunter/gatherer metaphor there, broomstick. One comedian remarked about how men were out hunting mastodon with a pointy stick while women spent all day sitting around in the caves eating chocolate.
But seriously, this isn’t about the earth, it’s about abstractions. Maps are abstractions, and IMHO, women are not as good at spatial abstractions as men. In transferring that map coordinate to the earth, men rule. In my observations, men tend to navigate with NSEW, while women tend to give directions in left right up down (?!?).
I could give many examples from personal experience. I just returned from LA, with many frustrating incidents navigating around the Valley with an ex-girlfriend. For example, we’re looking for some restaurant she vaguely knows the location of.
Chas: How many blocks away is it?
Ex: it’s on the left somewhere.
Chas: <thinking: that wasn’t the question> But how FAR?
Ex: I think it’s a block or two past VanOwen.
Chas: So how far is it to VanOwen?
Ex: I don’t know, I think we went past it already.
But anyway, getting back to reality here, I do recall seeing a scientific paper a long time ago, I only vaguely recall the details, the paper was an attempt to prove that people navigate partly by magnetic sensing. They took men and women in equal numbers, and divided each sex into two groups. Everyone would wear an electromagnetic coil around their head to eliminate any effects on the brain from earth’s magnetic field, the control group would wear the same apparatus but it would not be activated. The subjects were taken to an unfamilar area while blindfolded, and given a navigational task (which I unfortunately have forgotten). Unfortunately the magnetic effects were disproven, the control group performed almost identically to the experimental group. However, they did accidentally prove that men had abilities superior to women when navigating in unfamiliar territories. The men consistently turned in better scores than the women.
Which hormome is the humour hormore?
I’ve heard the hunter/gatherer bit that Broomstick mentioned and it sounds reasonable. Like others I have seen studies indicating that, in general, men perform better in spatial tasks than women. Of course, that doesn’t mean you won’t run into men who can’t find their ass with both hands or women who could guide you unerringly across the Sahara.
Still, in regards to the study Chas.E mentioned above I wonder how much of that has to do with societal ways of raising men as opposed to women. I mean, if young girls aren’t given the chance to read a map or learn how to use a compass is it any wonder that their male counterparts (who are probably more likely to have received this type of instruction) do better in tests like these?
I’m willing to believe men are better at reading maps. When you regularly refuse to ask for directions, you have to have some compensating skill to get home(especially if you get utterly lost often), or there’d be more pictures of grown men on milk cartons.
I have to back up the opportunity for learning idea. I learned to read maps in Civil Air Patrol. Because no one even suggested that being female might make it hard for me to learn, it didn’t. But later when I tried to teach other girls to read simpler road maps, I found that they had a mental block against it and refused to understand.
I also tried to convert my female friends into playing strategy games like History of the World or Britania that require some basic map reading skills, though they didn’t know that. They seemed to need extra coaxing for confidence, but once they committed themselves they did fine. I waited until they were hooked before mentioning that women aren’t supposed to do well at these games. By that time they had won their share and laughed at the idea.
So for the original question of map reading being a gender related skill, the answer - in my great amount of experience - is no and yes. No, I don’t see any physical reason why women can’t read maps; I feel they can if they really try. But yes, I do see that many women can’t (or won’t) do it.
The previous comment says men have to read maps because they won’t stop for directions. Well, women don’t have to read maps because we will stop for directions. Maybe it’s apathy, maybe it’s the screaming children breaking our concentration.
Of course, the fact that historically map makers have overwhelmingly been men and therefore geared to male styles of navigation couldn’t possily have any effect on this, right?
“NSEW” only works if you know which direction is which. “LRUP” works whether you have a compass or not, whether you can see the sun/stars or not. One is not necessarily superior to the other, but dependent on the situation.
See - that’s a beautiful example of the two styles of navigation clashing. You’re always asking how far, she’s looking for landmarks. You want a specific distance, she’s looking for “VanOwen”.
So… you take people (women) who navigate by landmarks and blindfold them so they can’t see the landmarks, this “proves” that they can’t navigate in a strange area? If you plonk them down UNblindfolded in a strange area and ask them to navigate don’t you think they would do better? If you take men accustomed to using NSEW and plonk them down in a strange area with no compass, no sun, and no stars visibile and they can’t find their way around does that “prove” they can’t navigate in unfamillar territories? Does tying someone’s feet together then asking them to do a jig prove they can’t dance?
Here’s my “case history”:
Down at the airport we recently had a student (male, in his 40s) get lost on his first cross-country trip solo. He was heading for Danville, Illinois and wound up in Terre Haute, Indiana. When asked how he got to the wrong place he was very insistant that he had calculated the exact compass heading and airspeed and he didn’t understand what went wrong. He went direction X for Y minutes at Z speed. Well, he did, but the problem was the winds weren’t as predicted at his cruising altitude (not uncommon - the weather does change frequently) so they pushed him off course. He was also asked about landing at the wrong airport - the runways are in a different configuration, Danville has much smaller planes and lighter traffic, Terre Haute requires different permissions over the radio… like, dude, didn’t you notice the 737s and F-16 squadron parked on the ramp? And Mr. Navigator was very insistant that since he had gone direction X for Y minutes at Z speed and that, despite such incongruities as passenger jets at what was supposed to be a sleepy municipal airport, that it HAD to be the intended destination. Then someone asked “did you confirm your checkpoints?” (landmarks) and it turns out that, no, he didn’t bother with that. Or, rather, he had, but they didn’t match what he expected. But since he was going the “correct” direction at the “correct” speed he must be on course despite not seeing his intended landmarks.
So, does that prove men can’t navigate airplanes accurately? No, it proves this guy needs a few more lessons before being let out on his own again. Aviation does use the “NSEW” and time/distance of dead reckoning navigation frequently, but relying on it exclusively can get you very, very lost as many a pilot has discovered. In general, the men can get very frustrated because they MUST learn pilotage, the “female” form of navigation. Even flying on instruments - a highly cerebral style of flying and navigation relies on landmarks (radio beacons, actually) to confirm position.
In other words - whether you start out with “NSEW” or “LRUP”, if you want to really navigate with reliability you’re going to have to learn the other style as well as your own.
I love your username, Don’t poke the bear, Dad!
I find Karen’s credentials utterly hysterical.
Here are the details from one study which investigates the differences between men and women with regard to navigation http://www.smh.com.au/news/0003/22/world/world11.html This isn’t the only study which has shown biological differences, merely the most concise description I could find.
Also, it might be worth perusing the abstracts of the Scientific Journal of Orienteering: http://www.ped.gu.se/scijo/scijo.htm
On the anecdotal side, I spend a lot of time bushwhacking through the mountains and forests of northern New England. I have seen both men and women in action. Men have an easier time than women when the goal is a peak that none in the party have climbed before. On the other hand, women are much better on a return trip retracing the same route to the same mountain at a later date. With topographic maps, the key to interpreting them is visualizing the terrain. It’s essentially a math skill. However, it has been my experience that anyone can attain a reasonable skill level with practice in the field.
Biological, inherited differences between the human male and female is kind of a pet topic for me. Obviously, there ARE some. The physical ones are clear.
However, one must be VERY careful in stating what the mental ones are. Since we’re begine being socialized twenty seconds out of the womb, in most cases there is no possible way to determine if the differences we’re talking about are inborn or not.
Even studies that examine certain portions of the brain and compare those of separate genders are suspect. Think, for example, of a man who goes blind, and thus ends up, years later, with an atrophied “sight area” of his brain. Even when we do observe physical brain differences in the sexes, we can’t be sure that those are genetically inherited, since the differences could have developed from the separate ways we’re taught to do things.
I think the old “men don’t ask directions” schtick is getting a little tired. For one thing, it’s insulting to men. They’re not so stupid and stubborn that they won’t admit when they don’t know the way, or stop and ask for help. And the fact that legend has it WOMEN are more willing to stop and ask for help has nothing at all to do with their natural tendencies to navigate.
From the beginning, women tend drive and navigate less than men, waiting for dates to pick them up, rather than venturing out on thier own. At least traditionally. so it is possible tha women tend to be at a navigational disadvantage starting out and thus have to learn these skills later and in a different manner than men. However, I doubt if this trend can be traced back to biological differences of any sort.
For the record, I’m a pilot. I’m also always the person in my “gang” who knows where we’re going and how to get there. I always use NSEW as directional cues rather than right and left as someone suggested previously.
-L
[Moderator watch ON]
Regardless of this Karen woman’s credentials, we need to respect her copyright. Muffin, did you get her permission to post that?
[Moderator watch OFF]
As for why men don’t stop to ask for directions, I don’t think that it really matters whether men are better at reading maps. What matters is that most men think that men are better at reading maps, regardless of whether this is true. A man who thinks this will first consider stopping to ask to be unnecessary, and will secondly consider the suggestion an insult to his manliness. Note, of course, that not all men think this is true, as SexyWriter points out.
On the different styles of directions: It seems to me that absolute directions (NSEW) would be more useful, since they retain their validity if a person gets lost. If I’m giving someone directions to my apartment, for instance, I might say something like “get off of I-90, and turn south onto 19th avenue”. If the person is coming from the east, I could say “turn left onto 19th” instead, but what if they miss their exit, and have to turn around and approach from the west? Or what if I’m giving directions to two groups at once, one coming from each direction? Or suppose the person I’m directing gets lost, and happens to stumble across 19th by random meandering? I do, however, give reference for NESW, interestingly, using landmarks: “That big mountain with the M on it is northeast, and that other big mountain without the M is southeast”
Speaking just for myself, Chronos, it’s not about thinking I’m better at reading maps (as a man), nor do I see it as a failure of my male plumbing if I can’t find where I’m looking for.
I see it as a puzzle. Figuring out my destination from a map, or from written directions I’ve been given, is a challenge to rise to, like solving a crossword puzzle. If I have to give up and ask directions, it’s just as bad as turning the newspaper page upside down so I can read the answer to the clues I haven’t figured out.
It’s not because I think it means my penis is small. Oh, no no no.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Chronos *
[Moderator watch ON]
Regardless of this Karen woman’s credentials, we need to respect her copyright. Muffin, did you get her permission to post that?
[Moderator watch OFF]
No worries. I wrote it and hold both the copyright and the moral rights.
It was my feeble attempt at humour. C’mon: “Testicular navigation”? “Navicular gynoecium”? “Electrodynamic forces which bond women to Gaia”? If that isn’t over the top, I don’t know what is.
It is poking fun at folks (of either gender) who stumble on limited amounts of scientific evidence of very minor differences between genders, and then build them into a structure which extends gender bias. Just as the character in the story takes a minute point and carries it over the top to assert a world view, I suggest that when discussing gender difference in navigation, one must be very careful to not use the minimal evidence available to support a pre-existing world view with its pre-existing gender biases.
Having taught Outdoor Advenure Leadership at university, and spent a fair bit of time wandering about both with and without map or compass, including areas where only extremely inaccurate features have been preliminarily mapped in the first place, I’m inclined to believe that whatever biological based gender differences there may be concerning navigation, they are not noticable in real life among equally experienced persons, and that more navigation skills come with experience. The more you work with maps under various conditions, the better you get at it. The more you navigate without maps, the better you get at it. Practice makes perfect (or at least less hopelessly lost). I suggest that males tend to get more practice, both because they are often raised to be more dominant relative to female siblings, and because once adult they wish to either display or enforce authority.
BTW, my record for not having the slightest clue as to where I was was for five days. After a while I figured I might as well just go with it, and stopped worrying about where I was or was not. Fortunately, there were a couple of women along who were able to keep track of things.
just a comment on the backing-a-trailer thing… venture into the world of competitive horseback riding and you will meet many, many women adept at backing their trailers – with live cargo and without. It’s all about what you’re exposed to & practice, etc.
I am neither a scientist nor a sociologist nor a cartographer. But I would say that map skills are probably more experience related, like most any skill, rather than genetically stronger in one gender and weaker in the other. If one, regardless of gender, has exposure to a skill, one may pick it up, depending on one’s talents and general abilities. Skills are also determined to a point by perceived expectations – if you feel ‘girls shouldn’t be good at this’ or ‘boys shouldn’t know how to do this’, then you will tend to be biased against mastering the other gender’s activities. I think there is a high degree of social bias that makes young women feel that dumb and pretty is the best combination.
I have always enjoyed looking at maps, and navigating from them, a skill I think I learned from my dad. I tend to direct and prefer to be directed in the ‘masculine’ form: take exit 62 off I-85, turn right, go to T intersection and turn left onto Hwy 29. Go to the light but don’t turn, then take the third road on the right (about .7 miles past light). I can mentally guestimate any distance on a roadway between .1 and 10 miles with amazing accuracy. I don’t know how I do it – I just can. Practice, I guess. Anyway, I’m pleased with my mapping skills and they work for me.
A friend once directed me to her wedding by saying ‘turn right at the big tree and take the left fork where you see the cows’ or some such nonsense. That was a pretty irritating experience. Of course I felt hopelessly lost (Did I turn at the correct big tree? Are those the cows I should see, or are there others? What is the number of the road I should be on? Is it supposed to be dirt?) but I found it nonetheless. This friend knows where she’s going, but not what the street is called. That works well for her.
I have another friend who does not seem to understand that a map is a visual representation of the streets and where they meet and cross – she has no clue. I think she must have been told somewhere along the way that women needn’t worry their pretty heads about reading maps and following directions. But where does that leave her? Lost and helpless, that’s where. That was probably the idea. She wants lessons and I’ve told her I’d give them, but we don’t see each other frequently and never find the time.
So there’s my examples: one masculine style map reader, and one feminine style reader, both of whom get the job done and get where they’re going. And one more who has neither skill, and is probably standing on the side of a road near you, looking lost.