THE BETTER HALF

ON THE GENETIC SUPERIORITY OF WOMEN

SHARON MOALEM

Allen Lane, 288pp, £20

With fatalities from Covid-19 among men so much higher than among women, this is a timely book – a fact not lost on Guardian reviewer Gina Rippon. Women have an inbuilt genetic superiority, meaning they live longer, have better immune systems, survive cancer better and even see the world in a vastly greater number of colours than men. The reason, it appears, is their extra X chromosome: far better to have a spare X than just one and a ‘tiny Y’, she explained, adding that the problem is that the Y has thus far had ‘much more attention’. ‘Statistics going back as far as 1662 show women living longer than men,’ Rippon discovered; and medicine ‘needs to stop ignoring the secrets of women’s biological successes and find ways of harnessing them to improve the survival chances of the whole human race’. Stuart Ritchie in the Evening Standard was irritated by the whole weaker-stronger-sex thesis. ‘Does one sex really have to “win” over the other?’ he asked. Moalem, he admitted, ‘presents enough evidence to convince any reasonable reader that the XX vs. XY theory is worth pursuing. But he makes that evidence sound a great deal more solid than it really is.’ Neither Rippon nor Ritchie were enamoured of the chapter on autism and the male vs. female brain, and both pointed to the fact that too little attention is paid to women’s predilection to diseases such as MS and lupus, which derive precisely from their auto-immune superiority. Ultimately, Rippon was pleased with the book whereas Ritchie clearly wasn’t. Could the reason be as simple as X vs. Y?