 | | In summary, males experience more frequent and severe illness and higher mortality from many common disorders than do females. We present evidence supporting the notion that evolutionary selection has equipped females with X-linked immunoregulatory genes for coping with many life-threatening illnesses. The superior immunocompetence of females probably compensates for the immunosuppression accompanying pregnancy. Thus the pregnant woman and the species survive.
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Epilepsy has about the same incidence in both sexes, but according to the statistics of the Bureau of the Census the death rate from epilepsy is about 30 percent higher for men than for women. For every female stutterer there are five male stutterers. The stutter-type personality, characterized by a certain jerkiness or "stutter" of movements as well as of speech, occurs in the ratio of eight males to one female. Word deafness, the inherited inability to understand the meaning of sounds, occurs very much more frequently in the male than in the female, and so do baldness, gout, and ulcers of the stomach. Need one go on?
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The evidence is clear: From the constitutional standpoint woman is the stronger sex. The explanation of the greater constitutional strength of the female lies largely, if not entirely, in her possession of two complete X chromosomes and the male's possession of only one. The fact beyond question is that the natural, the biological, superiority of women is due to her having derived one chromosome from her mother and a second from her father, each chromosome differing from the other in the variety of genes it contains. This produces what is technically known as hybrid vigor, or heterosis, in the female, clearly contributing to her greater survival.
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This may not be the whole explanation of the physical constitutional superiority of the female, but it is certainly scientifically the most acceptable explanation and the one least open to question.
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To the unbiased student of the facts there can no longer remain any doubt of the constitutional superiority of the female. At the present time many insurance companies still charge the same insurance rates for women as for men. This hardly seems fair to women. But then when has anyone ever been fair to women? The occasions have been the exceptions. Man has projected his own weaknesses upon her, and as the muscle man
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