While some people may think that women are surviving coronavirus just because the virus affects them differently, the surprising truth is that women actually have a knack for outlasting men in times of crisis, whether it's during times of a global epidemics to times of famine.
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The average life expectancy for women in the UK is 83.1 compare that to the life expectancy of men (79.5) and you'll be able to see that men are fighting a losing battle. Even history is on the side of women.
Researchers from the Southern University of Denmark looked at seven different historic events that saw humanity enter times of hardship and famine and saw that women outlasted men at every turn. For example, during the Irish Famine from 1845 to1849 saw life expectancy drop from an average of about 38 years for both sexes to 18.7 and 22.4 for women.
Another case looked at the Icelandic epidemics of 1846 and 1882. The people of Iceland experienced two different outbreaks of measles during those times that took a toll on the entire country. Dramatic drops in life expectancy for both sexes each of the years that saw an outbreak. In 1882 the average lifespan for men dropped from 37.62 to 16.76 and for women from 43.99 to 18.83. While both sexes saw drastic decreases in life expectancy, females seemed to be more resilient overall.
In other cases in the study, even the death rate of infant males was higher than infant females. While its difficult to determine exactly what factors play into why women seem to live longer on be more resilient than males other research has shown that hormonal differences in men and women give women the advantage.
The researchers concluded that even in times of extreme hardships women seemed to outdo men in that they always tend to have a lower mortality rate and usually had a longer lifespan. So there you have it, it would seem there's just something physiologically better about being a woman.
