Letters to the Editor
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Visuospatial skills
It seems to be generally accepted that men are better on visuospatial skills than women, but generally although people don't score equally on all sections of intelligence tests, those who have very high verbal skills, regardless of sex, still tend to score higher on visuospatial skills than those who have very low verbal skills.
Me? I have lousy visuospatial skills, but do better on verbal stuff. (So maybe I have a woman's brain.)
For example in the GRE exam I maxed the verbal and the math, but only scored 650/800 on the section that deals with visual puzzles. This was to be expected, because I have difficulty even assembling a mower or a pair of sawhorses out of the box and have to use a great deal of trial and error, because I simply cannot read diagrams. Similarly I have problems using a pager, because I cannot understand on-screen icons and symbols. For a long time after I came to the US I did not understand what PED Xing means, because it did not occur to me that the letter 'X' could be read as the word "cross". It just looked like the name of a Chinese politician to me.
On the other hand, I was able to use verbal skills to memorize how to solve mathematical problems, hence still able to ace the math section. And when it comes to assembling things, although I am a dummy, when I have to do the same task again I remember it perfectly and even develop better ways to do the task than those suggested by the original instructions.
It took me all day the first time I installed a replacement front door, and the job still was not perfect, but now I can do it in an hour.
But as the original article writer suggests, she has no desire to stand in the way of people who have aptitude for these things, but those of us, men or women, who don't have aptitude for employment that requires a high level of visuospatial skills ought not to beat ourselves up over it, but should concentrate on doing what we do well.