When I first tried to pass my driving test, I wanted to use the indicators. Instead, I activated the windscreen wipers even though there was no cloud in sight. So I told the examiner that something had hit the windscreen and that I wanted to remove it. After a few minutes of wiping perfectly clean windows I decided to stop at what I thought was the side of the road. In fact, it was on the pavement. The examiner was polite enough to tell me that I should take the test again because I ‘did not pay enough attention to the traffic’. My male cousin could perfectly park my grandmother’s car when he was 13. I, on the other hand, only visit friends by car when they have their own garage with enough empty space to park a lorry and not just our tiny VW golf.

The list of my unsuccessful attempts to combat gender clichés goes on and on: I was top of my class at school in German and English, but I recently discovered that I’m unable to help Year 8 students with their Maths homework. I made a huge unintentional detour when showing newly-arrived Freshers around my college, despite the fact that I’ve lived there for a whole year, I just couldn’t picture the corridor that lead to the Hockey fields. And don’t bother asking me to aim a ball at a target.

Do these features make me female? Is it all down to socialisation, or is it my gender? The answer is simple, yet scary: it could be both – but you’ll never know for sure.

Gender difference is probably the most fundamental classification of human beings. We possess different chromosomes which produce different hormones, which in turn cause differences in outer appearance. But it’s more than penis envy or pride. Research has shown that there are substantial cognitive differences between men and women.

While men score higher in different kinds of mathematical tasks, women have better verbal abilities. Girls learn to speak earlier, faster – and better: female probands often score higher in verbal fluency tasks. When it comes to orientation, men remember directions, women remember landmarks. The evolutionary explanation sounds plausible, yet outdated. Or do you know any men who need to memorize long distances because they go out hunting?

Of course, good old socialisation could account for all of this. As children, we are treated differently by our parents, our teachers and our peers. The so-called ‘Baby X studies’ show this: during this experiment, babies are cross-dressed and adults play with them. It becomes apparent that they talk more to those babies they believe are female, whereas boys are encouraged to move around. So is it our parents who decide whether we act ‘male’ or ‘female’? Not quite.

Girls who suffer from a genetic disorder called congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) overproduce the hormone androgen, which leads to the formation of ambiguous external genitalia. This is usually fixed after birth and they are raised normally as girls. Yet it has been reported that they behave rather ‘tomboyish’ – and that they perform better in exactly those tasks we’ve classified as male: maths, mental rotation and the like.

Science has not found a definite explanation to the cognitive sex differences yet. We know, for example, that the male and female brain structures differ slightly. But many theses on the influences of hormones and genes remain rather unconvincing. And then there’s always the impact of socialisation – a factor difficult to be measured, yet highly powerful. After all, my parking woes might be down to a bad driving instructor.