Women Need Widescreen for Virtual Navigation

“It may sound like sexual prejudice, but it seems that men’s much-debated ability to navigate slightly better than women applies in virtual environments as well as the real world. And on average, says Microsoft computer scientist Mary Czerwinski, men are quicker to create a mental map of an environment and orient themselves within it.”

—Women Need Widescreen for Virtual NavigationNew Scientist)

I think that title should be “Women need wide screen” (two words). I wonder how much of this is because women have better peripheral vision than men. The author of this article could have spun it thus: “Narrow computer screens fail to provide the peripheral information that women process better then men.” But this article seems to focus on women’s shortcomings instead — suggesting that they neeed an extra technological prop in order to rise to the level of the men.