SEX and gender is never an issue in our modern times, but in the spirit of the monthlong Women’s Month celebration, here are empirical evidence on why women have emerged victorious.
The comparison is not for supremacy. It provides data to appreciate and celebrate individuality toward productive and diverse coexistence in a transformative society that co-creates dynamically a shared sense of humanity.
Longevity champions
Women’s life expectancy is 74.9 years, five years longer than men. Out of the 43 people in the world who’ve made it past 110 years, 42 are women (Global Gerontology Research Group). Anthropologists of hunter-gatherer societies have shown that the males and females in a tribe were equal in terms of physical work, but that women had the added burden of bearing children. They had to be physically stronger than men.
Data from seven historic cases were analyzed to gain new insights into the gender mortality gap. When populations were exposed to extreme hardship and under extreme conditions such as famines, epidemics and enslavement, it can be concluded that women were able to survive for longer than men (Frymorgen, 2018). In all the populations, women had lower mortality across almost all ages, and women lived longer on the average than men.
Survival’s biological underpinnings
The survival advantage of women is evident by the fact that under very harsh conditions, females survive better than males even at infant ages when behavioral and social differences may be minimal or favor males. Given the same amount of care, newborn males have a 10 percent greater risk of death than newborn females.
Women were found to respond faster to infection (Sandberg, Georgetown University) because of higher levels of estrogen and progesterone. Estrogens, found in larger quantities in women, have anti-inflammatory effects, whereas testosterone, found in larger amounts in men, may actually suppress the immune system.
Women can also handle pain better and have a higher pain threshold than men (McGill University). The pain of childbirth has fatal intensity if experienced outside labor and delivery situations.
Scientifically speaking, women tend to live longer than men due to a complex interaction of biological, environmental and social factors (Proceedings of National Academy of the United States of America). Kohli (2020) presented scientific facts to put to rest the debate that women are stronger than men.
Even during the Covid pandemic, there was a lower incidence and lower death rate among women (Siliezar, Harvard).
Women psyche
Women suffer stress to a higher degree at 28 percent as compared with 20 percent for men (American Psychological Association). But stress hormone cortisol tends to increase more rapidly in men than in women. In case of a breakup, women may feel the hurt deeper as compared to men, but they tend to heal faster while men simply move on and never really mend (Binghamton University and University College).
Women tend to cope with pressure better than men (Ben Gurion University, the University of St. Gallen and NYU Shanghai).
Suicide attempt is three to four times likely in women than in men (Schimelpfening, 2022) but the global suicide rate in 2020 is 12.6 per 100,000 in men with only 5.4 deaths per 100,000 in women. Women attempt more but die less in these suicide attempts. This could be because of the indecisiveness of women to die in the ambivalent nature of suicide, or the more lethal means that men use in a “cry-for-help” psychodynamics of suicide.
Women record less prevalence of alcohol abuse (0.8 percent versus 2 percent) and drug abuse (0.6 percent versus 1.3 percent) than men (Dattani, 2021). More women suffer depression (4.1 percent versus 2.7 percent) and anxiety (4.7 percent versus 2.7 percent) than men. But the most debilitating schizophrenia has a 1 to 1.4 ratio between women and men.
Women and intelligence
Men have higher brain volume; however, women still manage to beat them in IQ tests (University of Edinburgh). Women have thicker cortices, the area of the brain that is linked to improved performance on intelligence tests. Women can maintain cognitive skills and have better memory as men’s brains tend to diminish faster with age as compared to that of women (Washington University).
More women have college degrees (Philippine Statistics Authority, 2013) at 56.1 percent (men at 43.9 percent); more women have advanced degrees (Education Data Initiative, 2021) at 53 percent (men at 47 percent).
However, digital literacy is four times higher in men (Unesco). Financial literacy is also higher in men at 35 percent (women at 30 percent, Hasler and Lusardi, 2017). There are only 12.9 percent women on the billionaires list of Statista (2021), and only 58 on the list of Nobel Prize winners with 876 men (Richter, 2020).
Women and leadership
Women are rated better than men in leadership capabilities (Zener and Folkman, 2019). Women scored higher in 17 out of 19 leadership traits like initiative, resilience, self-development, results, integrity and honesty. Men only ranked slightly higher in the areas of technical and professional expertise and of developing strategic perspectives.
But such leadership seems underutilized at the government level. Based on United Nations data (2023), there are only 31 countries where 34 women serve as heads of state and/or government. Just 17 countries had a woman head of state, and 19 countries had a woman head of government. First-time compiled data by UN Women (2023) show that women represent only 22.8 percent of Cabinet members heading ministries leading a policy area. There are only 13 countries in which women hold 50 percent or more of the positions of Cabinet ministers leading policy areas.
Women at war
Women’s role during wars are glossed over, ignored or just absent in publications on classical warfare. But Paul Chrystal’s highly praised “Women at War in the Classical World” (2017) made an acclaimed shout-out of women’s role from Homeric Greece to the end of the Roman Empire, Second World War and the countless conflicts up to its date of publication. The book is dedicated to the many millions of women who have suffered in war — most often through no fault of their own.
Only a few women like Fulvia and Agrippina, and at least Cleopatra, Boudicca and the Amazon fighters are much better known in the 1,200 years of ancient Greeks and Romans. There is a large number of women who had a significant role in the causation, direction or conduct of wars and battles. Guile, military intelligence, diplomacy, tactical excellence, courage, atrocity and ferocity are just a few of the qualities exhibited among belligerent women in the Greek and Roman worlds.
But behind the women celebrities in the war narratives, we know everyday women in the classical period who married soldiers — typical army wives, running the farmstead, raising the children and schooling the next generation of soldiers. Women assume roles that are essential back-up for the soldiery, but it was also indicative of a dire and determined need among women to assist, subsist and survive in a war-torn environment, or to exploit the system, working the black markets and profiting from war, often just to scrape the most basic living.
Women could, and did, participate in battle, but often they are left to pick up the pieces during and after war. For women, their war is not over when the war is over.
War may be man’s work, but it is at same time the enduring curse of many a woman and girl (Homer).
Happy women’s month celebration to all women and all humanity that salutes women. Special mention to my mother Siony, wife Lyne and three daughters.
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