Women survive life’s slings and arrows

Mortality rate comparisons show females can better handle a life-or-death struggle, say researchers

Women, far from being the weaker sex, are much more likely to survive a life-threatening crisis, according to a study. Danish researchers looked at historic death rates for men and women during famines and epidemics, or for those who were slaves, and found that women generally survived their ordeals far longer, often outliving their male counterparts by years. One example they gave was the Irish Potato Famine, when life expectancy dropped from 38 for both sexes to 18.17 for men, but 22.4 for women.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT once quipped that a woman is like a tea bag: you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

So the former US first lady would certainly have approved of a new study that suggests women, far from being the weaker sex, are much more likely to survive a life-threatening crisis.

Researchers at the University of Southern Denmark trawled through historic data looking at death rates for men and women who suffered famines and epidemics, or who were sold into slavery.

In virtually every case, they found that women survived their ordeals far longer, often outliving their male counterparts by years, even when their circumstances were identical.

For example, before the Irish Potato Famine, which devastated the country from 1845 to 1849, both men and women lived until they were 38, on average. But at the height of the crisis, although life expectancy dropped to 18.17 for men, it only fell to 22.4 for women.

The same pattern was seen during the Swedish famine of 1772-73 and Ukraine harvest failures of 1933. Women also lived longer during two 19th-century Icelandic measles outbreaks, with females surviving up to two years longer than men.

Dr Virginia Zarulli, the lead author and assistant professor of epidemiology, writing in the journal PNAS, said: “The conditions experienced by the people in the analysed populations were horrific. Even though the crises reduced the female survival advantage in life expectancy, women still survived better than men. We find that even when mortality was very high, women lived longer.

“Most of the female advantage was due to differences in mortality among infants. It is striking that during epidemics and famines as harsh as those analysed here, newborn girls still survived better than newborn boys.” For all populations, far more women also lived to extreme old age than men.

The researchers said the results suggest that women are fundamentally biologically “hardier” than men, which may be due to differences in sex hormones.

Oestrogen is a known anti-inflammatory, which also protects the vascular system, while testosterone is a risk factor for many fatal diseases. The male sex hormone may also harm the immune system.

Evolutionary scientists believe that women may have a stronger immune system because they need to survive for at least nine months to give birth, whereas a man’s input into reproduction is transitory.

And because men only have one “X” chromosome, rather than two like women, there is no backup if one does not function correctly.

Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford University, said: “I think the answer possibly lies in the fact that males are more fragile. Women are just more determined; men give up quicker when the going gets tough. Women find it much harder to die in the final stages and often hang on in there well past the point at which males have given up and gone.”

Max Headley, professor of physiology at the University of Bristol, added: “It’s well-known that women tend to have more subcutaneous fat and a lower metabolic rate.

“So their stores of energy are likely to last longer in a famine.”