The vast majority of men around the world are stronger, taller and heavier than women. It has been and, it seems, will always be. Let's try to understand why.
Defeat on all fronts
Everything in the female body is smaller than in the male. The heart is 10-15% smaller, the brain is 15% smaller, and only 3.6 liters of blood is contained (while in men it is 4.5 liters). The metabolism in the male body is faster, and therefore, on average, he consumes 700 more calories per day. Women also "lose" in the structure of the skeleton, which turns out to be much easier for them. What can we say, if even in the category of "nose size" men win. Due to their large body weight, they need more oxygen, so men's noses are predominantly more massive, - at least, according to scientists from the University of Iowa (USA).
Inactive gene
Men are on average 15 centimeters taller than women. And a similar situation is observed all over the world. Finnish scientists believe that the reason for the difference in height between a man and a woman lies in the activity of a gene contained in the X chromosome. The more active the ITM2A gene, which develops in cartilaginous tissue, the less a person's chances of becoming high. The author of the study, Dr. Taru Tukiainen, emphasizes that the female body is endowed with this gene in double volume, and that is why the representatives of the beautiful half of humanity stop growing. Indeed, in the lower grades, boys are usually shorter than their peers, and this situation lasts until the age of 13. And then the demonstration of stunning results begins: over the summer holidays, boys can not only catch up, but also significantly surpass their classmates in growth.
Where is the compote?
The main food stereotype, actively supported by society, says: while it is enough for a woman to eat a light salad for dinner, a man will require an addition to it: half a stick of sausage, a liter of milk and a deep plate of a large slide of dumplings.
However, scientists interviewed in the films of the French director Veronica Kleiner are inclined to believe that the difference in height may be due to "food discrimination." For centuries, men have outnumbered women in the struggle for nutrition, and this could not but affect the formation of growth.
When there is a lack of food, a defense mechanism is triggered: the body saves energy, preferring to stop growth and direct the available resources to the development of vital organs, for example, the brain. But if earlier it was about survival, today there is a persistent stereotype: from early childhood, a man needs to be fed more. According to the UN, today women are twice as likely to be malnourished as men in the world.
Natural selection
Dutch scientists from the University of Groningen have linked the differences between men and women to reproductive function. For a large-scale study involving 10,000 American graduates, only blood relatives - brothers and sisters - were selected. It turned out that short women had more children in the future, while their short brothers turned out to be less successful. Conversely, taller women had fewer children, while their taller brothers had more offspring. Thus, for successful procreation, scientists believe, a woman simply needs to be small, and a man - big.
This is us, we-shi-tsy!
British doctors drew attention to another pattern. The male body contains 10% more testosterone hormone, and it is he who takes an active part in the formation of muscle mass. In the female body, an enzyme is more actively produced that produces visceral fat, which, as you know, weighs less than muscles. Thus, the male body is larger and heavier than the female. The accumulated fat is vital for women for "emergencies", for example, for carrying and giving birth to a child, as well as subsequent lactation.
Themselves to blame
Evolutionary psychologist Gert Stalp is convinced that the reason for the differences between the dimensions of the floors has been laid for centuries. For centuries, a man subconsciously sought a smaller woman for himself, while a woman wanted a man several centimeters taller next to her.
This choice, the scientist believes, may be due to two reasons. The first is biological: the taller a man is, the more offspring he can leave. The second is socio-cultural: the larger the man, the more courageous, more reliable he looks, the more comfortable his companion feels, but a woman who is too tall is rather an exception, a “violation of cultural norms”.
Statistics clearly confirm the hypothesis of scientists about the "subconscious choice": in the overwhelming majority of British couples (90%), men are larger than women, and only in 3.5% of cases a man and a woman have the same height, and 4% of couples consist of a tall woman and a short man.
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