Why women are strong

IFirst of 2 parts

T is Women’s Month celebration again. Some men jokingly ask why the celebration is necessary when, in fact, every day is Women’s Day.

Men are not weak, but women are indeed strong. In the spirit of the monthlong Women’s Month celebration, here are some pieces of evidence on why women are strong. The point of comparison is to celebrate women power so humanity can capitalize on it, or perhaps deduce some lessons from it.

The comparison is not for supremacy. It provides empirical data (references available) to appreciate and celebrate individuality toward productivity and unity in diversity. The coexistence of the sexes, and all the genders, embraces the uniqueness of humans in a transformative society that co-creates dynamically a shared sense of humanity.

Women live longer

Women are longevity champions with life expectancy of 74.9 years — that is five years longer than men. Women outlive men everywhere in the world. Out of the 43 people in the world who’ve made it past 110 years, 42 are women. The World Health Organization (WHO) in its 2019 statistics displayed women as tending to seek health care more than men.

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.

To gain new insights into the gender mortality gap, data from seven historic cases were analyzed when populations were exposed to extreme hardship and under extreme conditions such as famines, epidemics and enslavement. The studies concluded that women were able to survive for longer than men. These situations saw dramatic decreases in life expectancy but in all the populations, women had lower mortality across almost all ages and women lived longer on the average than men.

The biology of longevity

The survival advantage of women has fundamental biological underpinnings supported 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. Newborn males have a 10 percent greater risk of death than newborn females, given the same amount of care.

Women were found to respond faster to infection because of higher levels of estrogen and progesterone. Estrogen, found in larger quantities in women, have anti-inflammatory effects, whereas testosterone, found in larger amounts in men, may actually suppress the immune system.

The pain of childbirth has fatal intensity if experienced outside labor and delivery situations. A human body can bear only up to 45 del (unit) of pain. Yet at the time of giving birth, a mother in labor feels up to 57 del of pain. This is similar to 20 bones getting fractured at a time.

Even during the Covid pandemic, there was a lower incidence and lower death among women. Chinese researchers noted that more than 70 percent of those who died of Covid-19 were men. The WHO has reported that 63 percent of deaths related to Covid-19 in Europe have been among men, and the NYC health department said that men have been dying of coronavirus at almost twice the rate of women. The same goes for the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Men are generally at greater risk for cardiovascular and renal disease than are age-matched pre-menopausal women. In general, men had higher blood pressure than women through middle age. Furthermore, the incidence of uncontrolled hypertension is also greater in men than in women.

Scientifically speaking, women tend to live longer than men due to a complex interaction of biological, environmental and social factors, according to the 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.

Women’s psyche

Women suffer stress to a higher degree at 28 percent (men at 20 percent). But cortisol, the stress hormone, tends to increase more rapidly in men than in women. Women tend to cope with pressure better than men, according to the research. In case of a breakup, women may feel the hurt deeper as compared to men, but they tend to heal faster.

Though they report similar average stress levels, women are more likely than men to report that their stress levels are on the rise. Women are also much more likely to report physical and emotional symptoms of stress than men.

Women attempt more but die less in these suicide attempts. Suicide attempts are three to four times more likely in women than in men, but the global suicide rate in 2020 was 12.6 per 100,000 in men (5.4 deaths per 100,000 in women), according to WHO. 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 the “cry-for-help” psycho-dynamics 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. 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. 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.

More women have college degrees, at 56.1 percent (men at 43.9 percent), according to the Philippine Statistics Authority, while more women have advanced degrees at 53 percent (men at 47 percent), according to the Education Data Initiative in 2021.

However, digital literacy is four times higher in men, according to Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Financial literacy is also higher in men, at 35 percent (women at 30 percent). There are only 12.9 percent women on the billionaires list of Statista (2021).

There are only 58 women on the list of Nobel Prize winners against 876 men. Out of the current 74 national artists of the Philippines, only 16 (about 21percent) are women, including the latest addition, Nora Aunor.

Women and leadership

Women are rated better than men in leadership capability, according to the study of Zener and Folkman in 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 levels. 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.

To be continued next Friday, March 8, 2024