Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Mars and Venus

I asked an innocent question about why the mappers who respond to my blog – and probably who most likely respond to maps – tend to be men.

Cartophiliac commented that it’s probably a spatial thing between men and women… venus and mars… hens and roosters… Hillary and Bill. (Thanks for the comment, Carto!)

It got me thinking. So naturally, that got me googling. For your reading pleasure:

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=HVhDJ2rBR1QVPwvLnLnYpFJ1f3bFrGLh6SkWTJHbFzhL4DZT5f15!-1452952156?docId=5009299535

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/07/AR2008010702043.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hometruths/directions.shtml


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dear Majesty,
Well I don't know whether those articles prove men or women are more interested in maps, but I'm a woman and I like maps, even though I have a notoriously inaccurate (according to my family) sense of direction. My girls are very good at both map-reading and finding their way, I suppose to compensate for my deficiency. Three of the cartographers I know at National Geographic (where I work) happen to be female.
Thanks for telling me about the map festival coming to the Walters-- very cool. And since you liked the map of the week blog, perhaps you'll enjoy the new NatGeo online feature called Map of the Day, featuring maps from history and little stories about them, and a quiz question too:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/map/map-day