7 scientific reasons why women are better than men and more
The battle of the sexes has just taken a particularly irritating turn. For decades men have insisted they have a better sense of direction than women. This, they argue, makes them more accomplished drivers, navigators and map-readers. And now, science has proven them right. Research has revealed that men really are better at finding their way to a fixed location than women.
A study of both genders found that male participants could find their way out of a virtual maze faster than females, as well as solving 50 per cent more challenges along the way. It’s likely to make the next long car journey insufferable — but it should come as no surprise that men and women are creatures with different aptitudes.
Here, we reveal how, in every way, from night vision to handwriting style, the two sexes really are worlds apart. Bickering about what colour to paint the bedroom? Don’t give in. Women’s eyesight is generally better than men’s, especially when it comes to colours. Colour-blindness affects eight per cent of men, compared to just 0.5 per cent of women.
A woman also uses her eyes in a very different way to a man, explains Dr Anne Moir, a leading neuropsychologist and co-author of Brain Sex. “She has better peripheral vision and sees more detail, while he has better distance-judging vision,” she says.
This dates back millennia, to when huntergatherer males needed to track sudden movements from far away. Women — traditionally cooks and nurturers — developed closeup scrutiny for their daily chores.
There’s a scientific explanation, too. Women have more rods and cones (the light-receiving cells at the back of the eye) in their retinas, which gives them a wider arc of vision than men.
They can also see better in the dark, absorbing every glimmer of available light to aid their sight.
1. A softer touch
It sounds like a cliché, but a 2009 study in the Journal of Neuroscience found that women have a finer sense of touch — called "tactile agility" — than men. This is down to the size of the digits. People with smaller fingers have more closely-spaced sensory receptors, and so are more reactive to stimulation. These receptors are found in the outer layers of skin, called the epidermis, and are responsible for making us feel pressure, changes in texture, vibrations and pain.
2. Out of earshot
Men are five-and-a-half times more likely to lose their hearing, according to a 2008 study. There is no scientific explanation for this —boys and girls can hear equally well in childhood. It’s probably due to lifestyle and environmental factors that mostly affect men. Other research has found that women have better hearing at frequencies above 2,000Hz — equivalent to birds chirping — while men are tuned into lower-frequency sounds. This is most likely to be evolutionary, as a woman's hearing is sensitised to detect the noise of a crying baby.
3. Sweet scent
Women have a better nose for smells — and the reason for this lies in our brains. A study published last year found that female brains contained, on average, 43 per cent more cells and almost 50 per cent more neurons - nerve cells that transmit information — in the parts dedicated to odours. In particular, women are far better at recognising scents associated with people, not objects.
4. Way with words
Chatty women speak an average of 25,000 words a day, talking at a speed of 250 words a minute, according to Gary Smalley, author of Making Love Last Forever, a book on gender differences. Men, by contrast, utter just 12,000 words daily at 125 words a minute. Women also have varying vocal ranges. This, scientists say, is due to the female knack for empathy: speaking over a broader range of high and low pitched sounds makes us seem approachable.
5. Neater writing
Remarkably, women even differ when they write things down. In 2005, psychologists at the University of Leicester found it was possible to tell male and female handwriting apart — with two-thirds of participants able to identify a person’s gender simply by seeing their writing. This is thought to be due to progesterone, another female sex hormone, which girls are exposed to in the uterus before birth. As well as fostering "feminine" traits in personality, the high levels of the chemical were linked to neater, more rounded penmanship. Physical differences are also at play, namely the fingers. Men’s index fingers are usually shorter than their ring fingers, whereas in women it tends to be the opposite. This may account for men’s messier handwriting, with the longer ring finger impeding the movement of their hand across the page.
6. The pain gain
Women who have experienced the agony of labour swear it can't be true — but men have been shown to have a higher pain threshold. Pain is a subjective sensation and cannot be measured scientifically, so the proof is in our reactions rather than the experience itself. Women are far more likely to report feeling pain than men. Researchers from Leeds University say gender stereotypes — the idea that men should appear macho and tolerate painful experiences — are behind this, because cultural expectations help govern our behaviour. “Traditionally, high levels of stoicism are associated with men and high levels of sensitivity are associated with women,” explains Dr Osama Tashani, a pain scientist who led the study. This changes during childbirth because the surge in oestrogen levels causes the brain to release endorphins, lessening the pain a woman feels.
7. Body language
Women have the hormone oxytocin — a chemical released in the body during positive experiences, such as falling in love — to thank for our reputation as the friendlier sex. “Women have slightly higher levels of oxytocin, which makes them more open to social interaction and better at understanding what other people are feeling,” explains Dr Anne Machin, a leading psychologist and evolutionary anthropologist. She adds, “You can see this very clearly in the different ways we approach relationships. How a relationship is going defines a woman’s very being, whereas a man keeps his distance.”
(Courtesy of DailyMail.)