If you’ve long suspected that women are the hardier sex, then a new study covering three centuries of history has just confirmed that you were probably right.
It’s well-established that women worldwide tend to live longer than men and, after analysing historical records from across the globe, researchers have concluded that we aren’t just more likely to survive in ‘normal’ times but also during the most extreme circumstances, including famines and epidemics.
Even when mortality was considered very high for both sexes, women were seen to live longer by an average of between six months and almost four years.
And, after looking at mortality date going back almost three centuries, the team from the University of Southern Denmark and Duke University in the US also concluded that the ‘life expectancy gap’ is likely to be at least partly biological.
Their analysis showed that the female survival advantage was predominantly seen among infants: female newborns are more likely to survive during adversity, at a time in their development when behavioural differences between the sexes are minimal.
This suggests that behavioural differences between the sexes, including a propensity for violence or risk-taking, probably don’t play a large part in the gender gap.
One possible explanation is that women have higher levels of the hormone oestrogen, which has been shown to enhance the body’s immune defences against infectious diseases.
‘Our results add another piece to the puzzle of gender differences in survival,’ the researchers concluded in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
