It's been well established that men perform better than women when it comes to specific spatial tasks. But how much of that is linked to sex hormones versus cultural conditioning and other factors? 
 
 Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) decided to explore this idea by administering testosterone to women and testing how they performed in wayfinding tasks in a virtual environment. 
 
 Using fMRI, the researchers saw that men in the study took several shortcuts, oriented themselves more using cardinal directions and used a different part of the brain than the women in the study. 
 
 But when women got a drop of testosterone under their tongue, several of them were able to orient themselves better in the four cardinal directions. 
 
 "Men's sense of direction was more effective. They quite simply got to their destination faster," says Carl Pintzka, a medical doctor and PhD candidate at NTNU's Department of Neuroscience. 
 
 The directional sense findings are part of his doctoral thesis on how the brain functions differently in men and women. 
 
 Puzzle solving in a 3D maze 
 
 Pintzka used an MRI scanner to see whether there are any differences in brain activity when men and women orient themselves. Using 3D goggles and a joystick, the participants had to orient themselves in a very large virtual maze while functional images of their brains were continuously recorded. 
 
 Eighteen men and 18 women first took an hour to learn the layout of the maze before the scanning session. In the MRI scanner, they were given 30 seconds for each of the 45 navigation tasks. One of the tasks, for example, was to "find the yellow car" from different starting points. 
 
 Women often use a route 
 
 The men solved 50 per cent more of the tasks than the women. 
 
 According to Pintzka, women and men have different navigational strategies. Men use cardinal directions during navigation to a greater degree. 
 
 "If they're going to the Student Society building in Trondheim, for example, men usually go in the general direction where it's located. Women usually orient themselves along a route to get there, for example, 'go past the hairdresser and then up the street and turn right after the store'," he says. 
 
 The study shows that using the cardinal directions is more efficient because it is a more flexible strategy. The destination can be reached faster because the strategy depends less on where you start. 
 
 Women have better local memory 
 
 fMRI images of the brain showed that both men and women use large areas of the brain when they navigate, but some areas were different. The men used the hippocampus more, whereas women used their frontal areas to a greater extent. 
 
 "That's in sync with the fact that the hippocampus is necessary to make use of cardinal directions," says Pintzka. 
 
 He explains the findings in evolutionary terms. 
 
 "In ancient times, men were hunters and women were gatherers. Therefore, our brains probably evolved differently. For instance, other researchers have documented that women are better at finding objects locally than men. In simple terms, women are faster at finding things in the house, and men are faster at finding the house," Pintzka says. 
 
 A little testosterone under the tongue 
 
 Step two was to give some women testosterone just before they were going to solve the maze puzzles. 
 
 This was a different group of women than the group that was compared to men. In this step, 42 women were divided into two groups. Twenty-one of them received a drop of placebo, and 21 got a drop of testosterone under the tongue. The study was double-blinded so that neither Pintzka nor the women knew who got what. 
 
 "We hoped that they would be able to solve more tasks, but they didn't. But they had improved knowledge of the layout of the maze. And . And they used the hippocampus to a greater extent, which tends to be used more by men for navigating," says Pintzka. 
 
 Losing one's sense of direction is one of the first symptoms in Alzheimer's disease. 
 
 "Almost all brain-related diseases are different in men and women, either in the number of affected individuals or in severity. Therefore, something is likely protecting or harming people of one sex. Since we know that twice as many women as men are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, there might be something related to sex hormones that is harmful," says Pintzka. 
 
 He hopes that by understanding how men and women use different brain areas and strategies to navigate, researchers will be able to enhance the understanding of the disease's development, and develop coping strategies for those already affected. 
 
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 Reference: Changes in spatial cognition and brain activity after a single dose of testosterone in healthy women. Carl W.S. Pintzka et al. Behavioral Brain Research, Vol. 298, Part B, 1 February 2016, Pages 78-90. ||||| "Women are fast becoming our most educated workers – they are attending school at higher rates, and they are entering a wide range of careers and deepening their work experience," an accompanying fact sheet on the report says. 
 
 In the early 1990s, adult women were about as likely as men to earn a bachelor's degree or attend graduate school. But around the middle of the decade, women began to surpass men in college attainment. That increase also can be seen in professional degree programs – women now account for almost half of students in law, medical and business administration graduate programs. During the 1960s, women accounted for about 10 percent of students in those programs. 
 
 Now, women in the workforce are more likely to have at least a bachelor's degree than not. They're also making gains in occupations that traditionally have been dominated by men: doctors, lawyers, scientists and professors, to name a few. Today, women in their early 30s are just as likely to be doctors or lawyers as they are to be teachers or secretaries, the report shows. 
 
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 It's a familiar enough scenario for anyone who's added an affordable piece of IKEA'S assemble-it-yourself furniture to their home — someone has to face those stacks of laminated particle board and bags of bits and bolts. The question is, which member of the household is best suited for the task? 
 
 Couple assembles ikea furniture - which gender does it better Shutterstock 
 
 In 2008, Petra Hesser, the then-head of IKEA in Germany, stated that women were better at putting together the puzzle-like packages than their male counterparts. 
 
 “Men never look at the directions and have the most problems with construction because they always think they can do that,” Hesser, who now serves as the company's global human resources manager, said at the time. “That is empirically proven.” 
 
 MORE: IKEA urges anchoring its dressers and drawers to the wall to protect children 
 
 But when psychologists in Norway decided to put that claim to the test, they came up with a different result. 
 
 The study, published in the journal "Applied Cognitive Psychology," focused on 40 men and 40 women divided into two groups. One group had step-by-step instructions for putting together a kitchen cart and the other had to figure it out for themselves. 
 
 In both groups, the guys came out on top when it came to speed and accuracy. 
 
 But they shouldn't gloat just yet! 
 
 MORE: IKEA foils plans for massive games of hide-and-seek 
 
 "Aside from the time spent on instructions, women assembled the furniture nearly as fast as men did, and the sex difference in assembly score could be explained by differences in individual spatial ability," the study noted. 
 
 Follow Ree Hines on Twitter. ||||| One of the biggest conundrums in the financial world is this: Survey after survey shows that women lack confidence when it comes to investing and retirement planning. Yet if you look at the actual results, women often perform better than men. 
 
 Caryn Effron has seen this first-hand. A long-time real estate professional, she was motivated to start the website GoGirl Finance after witnessing a discussion between her college-aged son and daughter, and their friends. 
 
 The lunchtime chat was a vibrant exchange among all participants. That is, until the topic changed to stocks and investing. Then the young women went silent. 
 
 "Ninety percent of the time women don't participate [in financial discussions]. This is crazy in this day and age," says Effron, who launched her site in 2009 to encourage women to take charge of their finances. 
 
 Related: People who lose money make these 2 big investing mistakes 
 
 Women invest wisely: The evidence shows that women are far wiser at investing than they realize. Terrance Odean, a professor at Berkeley's Haas School of Business who has spent his career studying investor trends, found that men traded 45% more than women in the 1990s. He blamed it on male overconfidence. 
 
 All that extra trading actually caused men to have average returns that were a full percentage point lower than women. 
 
 Women are also less likely to engage in risky day trading or put their retirement funds entirely in stocks, according to Fidelity's data. They diversify their portfolios better across stocks, bonds and other investments. 
 
 Over the past decade, the median returns for both men and women are 7.3% to 7.4%, according to Fidelity data. But women's portfolios are much lower risk. 
 
 In the investing world, that's ideal -- get the highest return by taking on the least amount of risk. 
 
 Related: Shocking gender pay gap in London's banks 
 
 Women can end up with more: Kathy Murphy, president of Fidelity Personal Investing, is quick to point out that women save more than men on average and their investment portfolios perform as well if not better than men's. 
 
 Females typically save 8.3% of their income, while men only save 7.9%, Fidelity found after looking at over 12 million retirement accounts and adjusting for certain pay disparities between men and women. 
 
 That may not sound like a big difference, but it adds up over time. Consider that the median household income in the U.S. is around $50,000. If you apply those savings rates to the median income, women save about $200 more a year. 
 
 So if their returns are about the same, women would end up with more. 
 
 The data tell the story: Yet, research by Fidelity backs up what Effron saw at her dining room table. In a new study, Fidelity found that eight in 10 women admit that they held back from talking about their finances, even with close family and friends. 
 
 "Despite all the progress women have made in the workforce and otherwise, they still have an unwarranted confidence gap about their ability to engage in financial planning," says Murphy of Fidelity. 
 
 It's telling that 77% of women report they are confident discussing their health with a doctor on their own, yet less than half feel the same confidence when talking about money and investments with a professional. 
 
 Related: Women build bigger businesses 
 
 A seat at the table: The key is for women to take a seat at the table and participate in the financial conversation. 
 
 "Frankly ... it's just not that hard," Murphy emphasizes. 
 
 This isn't just about gender equality, it's common sense given the shifting dynamics of American households. 
 
 Already 40% of women out-earn their spouses, according to Pew Research, and nine in 10 women are expected to be the sole financial decision maker for their household at some point given that women are staying single for longer and often outliving their partners.
– "Men have a better sense of direction than women." So goes the headline on a press release outlining a new study from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The fact that men excel at certain spatial tasks, the release says, is well established. The goal of the study was to determine whether testosterone is the reason. Phase one involved 18 men and 18 women using a joystick and goggles to perform 45 navigation tasks, each with a 30-second time limit, on a 3D maze. They were hooked up to an fMRI machine that recorded their brain activity. The results: The men relied more on cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) took more shortcuts, and completed 50% more tasks than the women. And, researchers found, men and women use different parts of their brains—the hippocampus and frontal areas, respectively—for "wayfinding" tasks. "In ancient times, men were hunters and women were gatherers. Therefore, our brains probably evolved differently," researcher Carl Pintzka theorizes. "In simple terms, women are faster at finding things in the house, and men are faster at finding the house." In phase two, a new group of women were given a drop of testosterone and then asked to perform the navigation tasks. Researchers hoped they would complete more tasks. That didn’t happen, Pintzka says. However, their knowledge of the maze’s layout improved and they used the hippocampus more … like the men. The ultimate goal of the research, Pintzka says, is to gain more understanding about Alzheimer’s disease, which, per CNBC, affects many more women than men. Men’s prowess when it comes to navigation—and putting together furniture—isn’t necessarily cause for gloating. After all, women still live longer, are more likely to graduate college, and are better investors. (But a bit of bad news, women also are outpacing men when it comes to obesity.)