ISLAMABAD – Women are biologically more stronger than men and hence tend tooutlive their male counterparts, finds a study challenging theper-conceived notion that the female sex is weaker.
The findings showed that women do not just outlive men in normal times, butthey are also more likely to survive even in the worst of circumstancessuch as famines and epidemics.
Women’s increased life expectancy is because they tend to have a survivaladvantage in infancy rather than adulthood. In times of adversity, newborngirls are more likely to survive than newborn boys.
However, even when mortality was very high for both sexes, women stilllived longer than men by six months to almost four years on average,
This advantage in women may be largely due to biological factors such asgenetics or hormones, especially estrogens, which enhances the body’simmune defenses against infectious disease, the researchers explained.
“Our results add another piece to the puzzle of gender differences insurvival,” said researchers led by Virginia Zarulli, Assistant Professor atthe Duke University in Durham, US.
In the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academyof Sciences, the team analysed mortality data going back roughly 250 yearsfor people whose lives were cut short by famine, disease or othermisfortunes.
The data spanned seven populations in which the life expectancy for one orboth sexes was a dismal 20 years or less and found that newborn girls arehardier than newborn boys due biological factors.