Despite the differences between countries, the average foot size for women changes between US women’s 5 to 10 (EU 35 to 42), whereas the one for men changes between US men’s 7 to 10 (EU 40 to 44), except a few ones like [a man from Europe I saw on IG having EU 38 feet which is pretty small for a male and wearing women’s shoes especially the ones with pointy toes and stiletto heels](https://instagram.com/withhighheels?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)
Saw a few men with feet bigger than US 10 too, like Shaquille O’Neal with size 22 and Dwayne Johnson with size 14.
Why is there such a difference?
In: 1053
Men and women have different biological blueprints with different averages and experties because sometimes in nature it is more beneficial to a species to have a wide range of physical attributes and skills rather than being identical clones.
What a weird question.
Shoe size is generally proportional to height, and men are taller than women on average.
Also worth mentioning that US shoe sizes aren’t the same for men and women. A men’s 7 is roughly an 8.5 in women’s. So the gap is even bigger that you’re describing.
Male and female feet [differ enough](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11283437/) that ‘female feet and legs are not simply scaled-down versions of male feet but rather differ in a number of shape characteristics, particularly at the arch, the lateral side of the foot, the first toe, and the ball of the foot. These differences should be taken into account in the design and manufacture of women’s sport shoes.’
Part of it is bone structure difference in the feet. Male tendons, muscle and skin also tend to maintain more moisture and mass then females. Why? well its mostly the effects of testosterone which males naturally have more of then females.
You do know that men are in average taller, heavier, overall bigger than women, right? So the real question is why would you expect women to have disproportionally bigger feet? Why?
So, if you have raised dogs or have been around growing puppies long enough, you can get a fairly good sense of how big they will be by looking at their foot size, if they are mutts or you don’t have any idea what breed they may be.
If their feet look proportionately way too big compared to their body, odds are they will grow to a large size eventually. If the feet look about right, they likely won’t grow too much.
Dogs “grow into their feet”…if it didn’t work that way, there’s a chance their feet could end up too small for their size and weight as they rapidly grow to full size in a year, leading to mobility issues and possibly early death.
I just mention this, because it’s just the correlation of foot size to eventual adult size far more obvious in dogs than it is for human babies that have a couple decades of growth ahead of them, leading to questions like this!
On average, men are taller, bigger, and heavier than women. Generally, the heavier you are, the bigger the surface area you need your weight distributed over. So men tend to have longer and wider feet so that their greater weight is distributed over a larger area.
The pressure on a surface is given by force / area. Here, you can think of force as a person’s weight and area as the size of their feet. If men had the same size feet as women, the amount of pressure on their feet would be much higher and likely cause more pain and injury. So men need bigger feet to reduce the pressure on their feet to avoid injury.
To take it to extremes, hippos have very large feet and horses and relatively small ones. If Hippos had feet the size of horses, the pressure on them would be enormous, and they’d end up breaking bones in their feet and ankles.
I think what OP is actually asking but doesn’t know it is why do humans have sexual dimorphism. Because as others have said, the feet are proportional to the rest of the body (I.e height, weight, muscle mass and so on, so forth).
Men evolved different proportions in several different areas. Larger chest, shoulders, thicker skin, narrower hips, larger jaws, and bigger hands and feet.
Theoretically women would (and still) choose men with these traits as they aided their ability to run down prey, fight off predators, and/or other men.
The center of gravity in women is typically below the belly button ( men’s is much higher). A lower center of gravity results in more stable movement. Men have bigger feet relative to size to compensate for the instability created from having a higher center of gravity. Men need bigger feet than women for stability.
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