Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story

by Angela Saini

This problem runs all the way through research into women’s health. If a phenomenon affects women and only women, it’s all too often misunderstood. And this is compounded by the fact that even though they’re good at surviving, women aren’t healthier than men. In fact, quite the opposite. “If you could add up all the pain in the world, all the physical pain, I suspect that women have way, way more of it. This is one of the penalties of being a better survivor. You survive, but maybe not quite as intact as you were before,” says Steven Austad. Statistically, it could even explain why women seem proportionally sicker than men. “Part of the reason that there are more women than men around in ill health is to do with the fact that women have survived events that would kill men, and so the equivalent men are no longer with us.”