Hey! I’m wonderin that how does the population ratio is still more or less %50-50 (%49.5 female vs %50.5 male) even that the knowledge we know;
1- Men is being killed, and killed in past in wars.
2- Men is working on heavy-duty jobs that killed men.
3- We also know that the expected life span of a female is higher than men.
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So, there should be some imbalances, right?
Men dies in wars, in dangeroues jobs and has less life time.
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So, how does the ratio keep its balance?
In: Biology
There is an imbalance between men an women in Rwanda where the number of death of men due to war, in that case civil war / genocide, was truly significant.
In ancient times, it used to be said that when a society had an abundance of males it was ready for war. There are talks about both China and India being ready for war, today. So maybe wars don’t create imbalance but rather restore balance
Deaths due to war are a small portion of all deaths in most countries and have been for a long time. There have been exceptions – Russia, for example, has a significantly higher female population from the WW2 era than male population because the male population saw a brutal death rate in WW2.
Men work in more dangerous jobs in general, but again these are a small portion of overall deaths. Take the US – there’s around 5000 workplace related deaths each year, which works out to about 14/day. Cancer kills about 1600 per day. Over a hundred times as many, and that’s just one of many causes of death unrelated to the workplace. All in workplace deaths are only about 1/500 deaths in the US.
Another factor in the balance – more males are born than females. Hypothesis is that the male sperm are faster. In the US there are about 5% more males born each year than females.
Before we talk about death, let’s talk about birth, more specifically, genetics (what makes male and female).
The formation of a baby requires a female egg (which always has an X chromosome) and a male sperm (which could have either an X or a Y chromosome). You probably know that it takes an XY combination to make a male and an XX combination to make a female. So how is it that we know it should be about 50/50 male:female sperm? In very simple terms, the DNA in an egg and a sperm creates a cell with half the DNA of a standard human cell and when put together a fertilized egg has all the DNA needed to make a human (pretty cool actually).
When making the egg the female only has X chromosomes, so in oogenisis (the formation of the egg in a female) when the cells split up they only have x chromosomes to “choose” from, that’s where the first X comes from. For spermatogenesis (the formation of sperm in the male) each single cell that is used actually forms 4 sperm cells (long story short, 1 full cell splits into two full cells and each of those two cells split in half cells, aka sperm, making a total of 4). When you split the DNA into 2, one half will have an X chromosome and the other half will have a Y chromosome. This makes it a 50/50 chance of the sperm that reaches the egg will be male or female.
As far as death goes, I haven’t looked into the actual numbers so I can’t really say anything on that. But at this point in time the world is relatively peaceful (I know there are wars that are going on around the world, but nothing anywhere near the scale a world war, which would actually cause a percent decrease in the population). That being the case it would make sense to have a slightly higher percentage of woman in the world than man, given that they live longer.
We don’t often die during child birth, or as a complication of such.
We also have a culture that for some reason values Male heirs that much higher than females, that in counties with population control measures in place, it was common place for females to be aborted, and or abandoned (China for example).
And whilst males are at a significantly higher risk of being the victim of violent crime, comparable to females, due to some of our innate physiological differences, were also less likely to incur as much physical damage as say, a biological sex known for less muscle mass, bone density ect when experiencing the exact same level the of violence.
Also, female life expectancy is higher than males, as it takes into account your first and second point too.
Additionally, whilst many men are killed during wars, many women are killed as the spoils of war
However, another point is, that throughout history, there have been times it hasn’t been so equal – after crisis like world wars. Women typically outnumbered men, and this along with other circumstances was leveraged most during sufferegette movements, empowering women to a more equal footing, with rights like the ability to vote.
So to answer your question, why does the ratio remain so equal?
One, it doesn’t, it just takes a big shift to swing the ratio,
two the stats you’re looking at are bias towards men (what I mean is you’re looking at areas men die more than women, without considering that it could be balanced, by the areas women die where men don’t)
and three, as a species we’ve placed more importance on culture, social conventions, and our ability to deny/alter/meddle with nature than to live within its confines and allow it to truly rule us.
Women died in childbirth. Historically. And women had like, tons of children, so the chances were high. Women were also murdered a lot, and still are. Also, natural causes. And the same causes as men like famine and disease.
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