Space Sharing – Gender difference?

Men and women can experience spaces in different ways for physiological reasons that seem quite distinct from their sexual preferences.

• Because female fingers tend to be smaller than male ones (women are often shorter than men), they have a better sense of touch, they may perceive textures on surfaces differently than men because both have the same number of nerve endings in their fingers but in women those nerve endings are clustered more closely together. A chair arm that might seem fine to a male group might seem scratchy or itchy or otherwise undesirable to women, for example.
• Women have a more acute sense of smell than men, so an air freshener in a living room that seems just right to a male guest may seem way too strong for female guests.
• Women excel at distinguishing one colour from another, especially different sorts of red shades (men’s visual superpowers are being more sensitive to fine detail and to picking out rapidly moving things), so a colour combination that may seem great to a male host may grate on the nerves of a female guest. Men are more likely to be colour-blind than women.
• Men are more likely to become hard of hearing as they age than women, although women’s ears also work better younger than older.
• Women are more comfortable talking with people seated in front of them and men with people they’re sitting beside, more reasons to have different seating options available.
• Men are particularly uncomfortable when they are closer to another person than they want to be, while women are more stressed by being further away from someone else than they’d like to be.