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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To be interested in why women generally live longer than men?

183 replies

JFDIYOLO · 04/10/2025 15:38

Quite a few articles doing the rounds this week.

The XX chromosome combo seems more robust - if there's something wrong with one X, a woman's other X will compensate (eg I probably carry my father's colour blindness but my mother's healthy X patched that). But male embryos/men, with only the one X, may be more vulnerable.

Female embryos are more engaged with building the immune system very early on than male.

Men are more likely to do risky behaviour like motorbikes, driving dangerous, drinking, fighting - testosterone is a dangerous drug?

Men are more likely to be doing dangerous professions - building sites, deep sea diving, the military etc, and to die at work.

Men are more likely to murder and be murdered.

Men are less likely to consult a doctor for health issues - I once came home to find my partner googling 'What should I do about this pain in my chest' (yes, heart attack) whereas I'm on the phone if it doesn't look right, feel right, act right and to take every routine test on offer - because I've been socialised to know my entire female anatomy is trying to kill me.

Men are less likely to talk about and ask for help with mental and emotional issues which can descend into depression, and higher male suicides.

Even though women still die in childbirth, suffer PND, are way more likely to be murdered by their intimate partners and are prescribed drugs that were habitually not developed using female test cohorts.

www.sciencenewstoday.org/why-do-women-live-longer-than-men-scientists-say-the-answer-lies-in-evolution

OP posts:
Ilfurfante · 04/10/2025 19:19

Isn't a large part due to men having to work harder physiologically to keep themselves alive (higher muscle mass, bone density etc) so their bodies fatigue earlier.

Abhannmor · 04/10/2025 19:14

Isn't it only one Y out of forty six chromosomes? I can never remember. Still that is one X without a - slightly different - copy. A weakness in the immune system. Women did slightly better during COVID iirc.

MushroomQueen · 04/10/2025 18:47

I don’t know the reasons exactly- but when my daughter threatened an early labour and I was being scanned and heart rate monitored they asked if it was a boy or girl - when I said girl they said girls are stronger and have better chances than boys if born early. Which I didn’t know, so it seems to be a recurring theme.

PrizedPickledPopcorn · 04/10/2025 18:38

What I think ,ore interesting, is married men living longer than single, whereas for women it’s the other way round!

ObliviousCoalmine · 04/10/2025 18:38

Because we don’t do things like balance precariously on stair bannisters in socked feet to change a lightbulb.

ginasevern · 04/10/2025 18:37

@PrizedPickledPopcorn

"Why wouldn’t men be more useful in old age though? It’s not as if women can breastfeed in old age. We aren’t physically useful, so why can’t men make themselves useful too?"

Because they get old and weak and are no longer able to bring down a woolly mammoth or sabre tooth tiger. Women on the other hand will still contribute by helping to rear the upcoming generation. Whether that's through their experience of child rearing/bearing, cooking or skinning animals to make clothes and bedding or milking goats. If the tribe's children were left to old men to look after, can you imagine the result? It just wouldn't happen.

PrizedPickledPopcorn · 04/10/2025 18:37

Yes,DH was good to let me have a sterilisation, which would mean being admitted and an overnight stay, full sedation etc.
He only went for the vasectomy when they refused me the operation. My explanation as to why they said no, finally helped him realise that there was a massive difference between his procedure and the female equivalent.

Timeforabitofpeace · 04/10/2025 18:36

stillhiding1990 · 04/10/2025 18:29

Diet too. Men generally have higher salt, fat diets

I was thinking diet, too. And aversion to healthcare, especially amongst some men.

PastaAllaNorma · 04/10/2025 18:33

PuppyKeep · 04/10/2025 18:28

look at the fuss men make about contraception and vasectomy

What do you mean?

DP made more of a song and dance of his insignificant little incision for a vasectomy than I did for an emergency C section. SIL said the same about her emergency section and BIL's vasectomy.

Anecdote doesn't = data, I know. But they aren't exactly stoic in the face of illness or pain. That's why they call it Manflu.

daisychain01 · 04/10/2025 18:32

Crushed23 · 04/10/2025 16:28

This is the sensible explanation, but I look around me and think women are just less fucking stupid. 😂 The men in my social group are 20-30% bigger than the women by mass but easily drink twice as much. Young men drive like lunatics (which is why their insurance is significantly higher than young women’s). All high-risk activities are dominated by men - the gender split of the people who perished trying to climb Mount Everest speaks for itself.

And so on and so on.

Yup it's like the Darwin Awards isn't it 🤣

stillhiding1990 · 04/10/2025 18:29

Diet too. Men generally have higher salt, fat diets

PuppyKeep · 04/10/2025 18:28

look at the fuss men make about contraception and vasectomy

What do you mean?

Throughahedgebackwards · 04/10/2025 18:26

It makes sense in evolutionary terms for women to be hardier. The ongoing survival of nomadic people covering great distances, during the ice age with very limited food, depends very much more on the survival of a significant number of women than it does on a significant number of men.

PuppyKeep · 04/10/2025 18:24

PrizedPickledPopcorn · 04/10/2025 16:09

Why wouldn’t men be more useful in old age though? It’s not as if women can breastfeed in old age. We aren’t physically useful, so why can’t men make themselves useful too?

Women CAN breastfeed in old age.

Middlemarch123 · 04/10/2025 18:18

Needspaceforlego · 04/10/2025 16:38

Did you know premature baby girls have a higher survival rate than premature baby boys?

So while environmental factors play a part for adults there is something stronger in females than males from birth.

I had premature twins 30 years ago. They were ten weeks early, delivered by C section, because I had severe pre eclampsia. Doctors said it was a miracle all three of us survived. It really was touch and go up until delivery for the babies and me. I then had a post delivery eclamptic fit, and was in HDU for forty eight hours. The babies were in SCBU. They didn’t even need oxygen, just tube feeding and warmth and monitoring. After I pulled round, my consultant told me that we all survived because we are females! “Be very grateful you delivered girls, they are so much stronger than premature males.” What I then witnessed visiting the baby unit in the weeks following confirmed his words, the majority of the incubators had baby boys in them. My girls, despite their low birth weight, were discharged and home with us six weeks before their due date. They are now beautiful young women, I am blessed.

MrsTerryPratchett · 04/10/2025 18:06

The heart attack reason, BTW, is wrong. Women are MORE likely to die of a first heart attack for many reasons, one of which is that men’s symptoms are the ones we’ve all been taught. Women’s aren’t taught and therefore not recognised.

On the ‘why women, why not men’ of evolution’ it’s a lot of things. Women gather, we know where the water is, where the berries in times of famine are. Men hunt. In almost all hunter-gatherer societies hunting is a ‘nice to have’ which supplies far fewer (and less reliable) calories. Men eat more and use more resources. They die first in famines. In wars. Women can help with children better (without killing them or abusing them - sorry but it’s true). Menopause means we’re awake at night to guard the camp and tend the fire. Typically women protect the genes of their children, but also the related children (nieces, cousins, grandchildren) conferring advantage. Men don’t typically.

Women tend to have lots of other skills. Sewing, cooking, mashing tubers, tending fires, making fish hooks… All the things that you can still do when you’re 80 leaving the youngsters to hunt and gather.

If you’ve ever spent time in places which are slightly closer to how our ancestors lived, and I have, the men do the BIG TASK (hunting, herding, farming) then they sit down. Women are always moving, carrying, caring, cooking, cleaning, making cheese, storing pickles, cleaning vegetables to store, fermenting stuff, doing doing doing. So as they age, men can’t do the BIG TASK and just consume resources. Women are consuming less and contributing more to the survival of the genes.

LadyGreyjoy · 04/10/2025 17:52

Quite simply - testosterone.

Castrated males live as long as females.

LoftyRobin · 04/10/2025 17:29

When it comes to neonates, boys are known to be lazy when it comes to breathing. Higher chance of a prem or unwell baby needing to be intubated if it is a boy.

Lilyhatesjaz · 04/10/2025 17:16

Wouldn't it have been more even in the past as quite a large number of women would have died during child birth.

PastaAllaNorma · 04/10/2025 17:11

XX chromosomes is why more men died of COVID than women, or so it was reported.

So many genetic conditions are Y chromosome specific. More boys are born but more girls live through childhood.

Kuretake · 04/10/2025 17:10

FrodoBiggins · 04/10/2025 17:05

Is it true that smaller people live longer, on average?

It is. It's a terrible testament to how obsessed people are with being attractive that we still all want our sons to be tall.

unsync · 04/10/2025 17:10

@PrizedPickledPopcorn Men can continue to reproduce, so they don't really shift gears (in reproductive terms) as women do. Also, women are definitely capable of living communally in harmony.

Males are more driven to ensure their genetic legacy. Other males and their offspring are a threat to that legacy. You may think that only applies in nature, but look at the fuss men make about contraception and vasectomy. More chillingly, the number of children killed or abused by a woman's new partner.

In evolutionary terms, men and women are hardwired to have very different roles. Then you also have a societal overlay.

TomatoSandwiches · 04/10/2025 17:08

FrodoBiggins · 04/10/2025 17:05

Is it true that smaller people live longer, on average?

Yes, they tend to cope with G-force better as well, so I imagine many jet pilots are smaller than average.

Hellohelga · 04/10/2025 17:05

Needspaceforlego · 04/10/2025 16:38

Did you know premature baby girls have a higher survival rate than premature baby boys?

So while environmental factors play a part for adults there is something stronger in females than males from birth.

Also more baby boys are born but more baby girls survive.
The ratio of boys born to girls born is between approx 104:100 and 106:100
After infant deaths it’s approx 100:100

FrodoBiggins · 04/10/2025 17:05

Is it true that smaller people live longer, on average?