Ingeniousity.net

I was talking to someone a few days ago about nothing much and he made the comment that "you can often tell, just by watching, that a car is being driven by a woman - even if you can't actually see the driver."

 

Without making any value judgements about who are "better" drivers, I have to agree. And after thinking a bit more about it I came up with this conclusion: There is plenty of evidence that men and women are different neurologically, and this leads to differences in the way we organise things, as well as the way we process and respond to information. When driving, we are processing, responding, dealing with a system.

 

The system is designed, usually, by men. The road layouts, the rules of the road, the way the vehicle operates, are largely the product of  the male mind. And women trying to function in that environment are always at a slight disadvantage, because they're in a system that was designed by people based on the assumption that everyone thinks in the same way.

 

It would be interesting to see how traffic would work if everything was designed by women. What subtle differences would be made to the way cities are laid out? Would men find it difficult to function in this new environment?

 

The only way to find out would be to build a city where women are in charge. Not as an exercise in feminism, but as an investigation into neurology and systems. We could learn some fantastic things!