Female Supremacy Articles

Screen 8 of 18

As for men, Perls believes "their purpose is simply to carry genes that ensure longevity and pass them on to their daughters. Thus, female longevity becomes the force that determines the natural life span of both men and women."

"Most animals do not undergo menopause," adds Ruth Fretts, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. "It seems that menopause evolved in part as a response to the amount of time that the young remain dependent on adults to ensure their survival."

Pilot whales, for example, suckle their young until age 14, and they, along with humans, are two of the few species that menstruate.

Human females eventually become so frail that bearing children involves a high risk of death. Earlier in evolution, that was as young as 35 to 40 years old. "Anyone who developed a genetic alteration that caused infertility, i.e., menopause, obtained a survival advantage over females who continued to be fertile and died bearing children," Perls says.

The Gender Gap

This reasoning, however, does not explain why women live so much longer than men. "In all developed countries and most undeveloped ones, women outlive men, sometimes by a margin of 10 years," Perls and Fretts note. "In the U.S., average life expectancy at birth is about 79 years for women and about 72 years for men."