The windows shell requires double quotes around paths which contain spaces

This doesn't accurately describe Windows behaviour. In the cmd.exe shell (on Windows 7) I can do:

C:\>mkdir "with a space"

C:\>cd with a space

C:\with a space>
[download]

Sure, the first command needed the quotes. Otherwise I create 3 directories - namely "with", "a", and "space".
But the second command does not need any quotation at all.

Contrast this with the bash shell on Debian:

sisyphus-sis@debian-sis:~$ mkdir "with a space"
sisyphus-sis@debian-sis:~$ cd with a space
-bash: cd: with: No such file or directory
sisyphus-sis@debian-sis:~$ cd "with a space"
sisyphus-sis@debian-sis:~/with a space$
[download]

There's a similarity with Windows - without the quotes in the first command, directories "with", "a" and "space" will again be created.
However, here we see that, unlike the Windows cmd.exe shell, the Debian bash shell also requires quotes for the second (cd) command.

It therefore seems to me that your assertion is more applicable to Debian than to Windows.

Cheers,
Rob