I'm so with you on this one @zen-art. There is so much conditioning. A couple of decades ago a daft pop-science book entitled "Why men don't listen and women can't read maps". I've enjoyed reading maps since I was a child, and I used to navigate for my parents when we were on holiday. So maybe it's not really surprising that I regularly organise walks for Meetup groups. Most people don't actually believe that women can't read maps, but there are maybe one or two who still take this kind of stuff seriously and try and challenge me about my map-reading. Thankfully it is very rare.
When I did my Mountain Leader course recently there were about six women in our group who were all excellent navigators (we were taking it in turns to do navigation exercises). I'm booked on a winter mountain navigation course in a few weeks, which will be taught by a woman.
It's sad that some women – including my sister, who is a Professor of psychiatry – have come to believe that they simply can't read maps. They've built up a mental block about it.