The bright-pink parking places could not be missed. There, in the underground parking facility of the Shanghai Maxdo Centre skyscraper, four spaces specially designated for women, 20 centimeters wider and longer, startled would-be parkers with their pink hue and feminine figure of a skirted silhouette. The message was loud and clear.

Once news of the new women-only spots got out, Shanghai social media became as heated as a hot flash over the special treatment of female drivers, with just as many netizens applauding Maxdo for their social service ("thank you for saving my car from getting dinged by a woman") as there were cries of sexism ("you insult us by suggesting that we need more room to maneuver").

Maxdo's meaning may forever remain a mystery - are they protecting female drivers from men, or protecting men from female drivers? - but good intentions or not, it won't change the fact that Chinese driving culture is not female friendly.

Data from the Traffic Management Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security shows that in 2014, out of 240 million drivers in China, 76.52 percent of them were male. With over 200,000 annual road deaths from approximately 500,000 accidents according to the World Health Organization, the numbers alone prove that the blame for China's unsafe roads clearly falls on its male majority. Even in Shanghai, a traffic policeman told news portal Eastday.com that the city's male drivers are involved in more severe accidents than females.

Yet, for some mystifying reason, male drivers continue to believe that women drive worse than them. The media helps perpetuate this stereotype by using the term "female driver" to report on accidents involving women but simply using the gender-neutral word "driver" when it involves a man.

Nonetheless, according to Eastday.com, even though female drivers are far more cautious and less aggressive on the open road, indeed we are more prone to minor accidents and fender benders in contained spaces, further fuelling the male-dominated driving public's fire, or rather, ire, against women drivers.

I myself am currently enrolled at a driving school in Shanghai, and can say with certainty that the lousy training we receive from these so-called schools plays a part in China's high accident rate. They are not lessons so much as a recital of an instruction manual. No theory education is given to the students. We have theoretical exams in the driving test, but we are told to just download a mobile app to practice our driving. Exam questions are primarily about traffic rules and regulations.

For the parking portion, we are told to turn the steering wheel 270 degrees at a certain spot marked by the instructor, ascertain the distance between the boundary line and the car, turn the steering wheel back 180 degrees, and that's it. We are not taught any practical advice on dynamic spatial awareness or maneuvers for angled or perpendicular parking. And the rest of the world wonders why we need parking attendants!

The debate about who makes better drivers, men or women, is as old as the automobile itself, and even though it has become obvious over the past 129 years that certain driving skills such as reversing and parallel parking are more prominent in men than women, for some reason our driving lessons remain coed and gender-neutral.

But the question remains: why are the fairer sex allegedly worse drivers in contained spaces such as car parks? Scientific studies argue that women find it harder to instantaneously distinguish their left hand from their right because we use both sides of our brain at the same time, whereas men have a dominant side of the brain.

Perhaps, but I personally think it's simply because of society's lack of confidence in us, as exemplified by these pink parking places. While we women certainly appreciate having our own private parking spots in a crowded city where space has become a major problem, our collective driving skills will never improve if we don't have to.