The other day, my husband called me to the balcony(阳台). "Come, dear, look at that car!"
"What's up?" I asked, looking down at the square in front of our apartment building. A driver was trying to park between two cars.
"That must be a woman," my husband said.
"How do you know?"
"I've watched the car move back and forth twenty times. Men can't be so bad at driving!"
"What if the driver is a man?" I asked.
"I bet you 50 yuan that the driver is a woman!"
We stood on the balcony and watched the car. It felt a little silly. Five minutes later, the car was finally parked perfectly, and a man slowly got out.
"Fifty yuan please," I said to my husband as he silently walked away.
My husband is not alone in looking down on female drivers. On weekends, my friend Lily likes traveling around the city by bus. But she always hesitates to get on a bus if the driver is a woman. "I can't trust a female driver," she told me one day. "Women are not born to drive, you know."
"Sorry, but I don't know," I said. I go to work by bus every day, and I never think female drivers are any worse. In fact, they are often more careful than men. Research also shows that female drivers are 8.8 times less likely to cause accidents than male drivers.
There are not many female bus drivers, though. And in the history of Formula One(一级方程式赛车), only 0.26 percent of drivers have been women. Without role models, many girls may think they are not meant to be good drivers. But the ability to drive has nothing to do with gender. Women can drive well, too. It's time to stop making jokes about female drivers.
