Different explanations have been put forward to account for gender-related differences in mental rotation (MR) tasks. This fMRI study focused on the two main strategies - allocentric and egocentric - for solving a MR task. The allocentric strategy has been shown to be faster and more effective than the egocentric strategy. Since men are better than women at solving this task, one would predict that men tend to use the object's frame, while women tend to use their own frame. 62 participant went through two experimental conditions, requiring them to use a specific method for solving a MR task. Behavioral results showed that men were faster than women both in the control condition and in the allocentric condition, but were more accurate in the latter condition only. Women improved their performance when imposed with an allocentric strategy compared to the other two conditions. fMRI data revealed gender differences in the contrast between the allocentric condition and the control condition, where women showed higher activation in the inferior frontal and somatosensory cortex. Our findings suggest that women may rely more on body-based processing during MR, even when triggered into a visuospatial strategy. When linked to the behavioral results, this result might indicate that the additional somatosensory activation somehow affects the MR process in females and prevents them from deploying a pure spatial strategy. These novel results shed some light in the field of MR, and suggest that gender differences are more a matter of strategy than gender itself.