GIRLS ON TOP

The senses of women are, on average, better than men’s across the board, says Ashley Ward. There’s one area in which men do better than women – motion detection. By contrast, women are better at colour reception, some even getting four types of colour cone in their eyes, thanks to a genetic mutation. One hypothesis from evolutionary anthropology is that men as hunters needed to see movement and women as gatherers needed to see slight differences in the brightness of fruit.

Women have a better sense of touch, which is probably explained by the fact that men tend to have larger hands, so women have more touch receptors by area. Every single square centimetre of our skin has about 15 sensory nerve fibres on average, making about 230,000 for the entire body. They are most densely packed in the fingertips, followed by the lip area. Multiple studies show women also have more sensitivity to pain, being far less insulated against it by their hormones; early exposure to testosterone ultimately makes males less so.

Something like one in 12 men experience red–green colour blindness. It’s comparatively rare among women, because some of the genes involved are located on the X chromosome. Since women have two copies of this chromosome, it makes it much less likely that they will be affected by the condition.

Women are much better at smell, and therefore taste, probably because they carry fetuses so need to be hyper-alert to any potential threat that might come through diet. Aesthetic taste aside, men need to listen to women’s views. “If men are going to get into an argument about how something looks or feels or sounds or smells,” says Ward, “then we are probably better to defer to women in some sense.”