Why are women always smaller than men?

Question

In every nation in every race we find that women are always smaller weaker and shorter than men

Can you figure out why?

Answer 1

throughout most of history and still present in some cultures today, the fatter and more wide hips a woman has/had, the more attrative she was/is.

It is an interesting physiological question, why are females smaller then males? In many species, the females are the larger of the normal pair with the reason being that they need more body space to create offspring (whiether egg or live). In mammals, however, females are are almost always smaller then males.

In physiology, this is called sexual size dimorphism (SSD) and there are several theories for it (evolution theories here):

1) Mortality is higher with larger creatures. Simply put, males are more likely to die to selective predation (predators looking for the biggest meal), diseases and parisites, and lack of food resouces. Thus women evolved to be smaller so they could live longer at the same time men evolved to be larger because..

2) The larger males have a competative sex advantage. They are bigger and stronger and able to outfight the other males in order to mate. This goes hand in hand with males being more disposable to a mammal group because there really only needs to be one male to a group. Thus you get the alpha, beta seperations. The disposable males do have a need to be able to fight predators, that is typically their role which is another reason to evolve to a larger size.

3) In general it is believed that a male-male competatition will lead to a larger male size where a female-female competition will lead to a larger female size.


I found a good website on this topic:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2907.2005.00045.x/full/?cookieSet=1

Answer 2

Actually, not all women are smaller, weaker, and shorter than men. There are some men who are small and not very strong, or some that are short and indeed very strong, as well as some women who are much taller than your average guy, just like there are some women who are stronger than some guys. There are people of all sizes and strength. But when compared side by side a male and a female of the same average, the male indeed will be larger and stronger than the female. I guess it all comes back to the old ages where man had to compete with other males for their woman, perhaps in battles, and the bigger the guy was, the better their chances. Also, the guys were the hunters and they needed all their strength and size to come home with a big chunk of meat to feed the entire family, whereas women didn't need to be that big nor strong in order to care for their family.

Answer 3

You don't seem to understand biology too well.
Human males have more androgen and testosterone, which promotes muscle development and larger bone size.
There is no human race or ethnic group where women outsize men.

Answer 4

Obviously you've never stood outside a Walmart for 15 minutes and have seen what walks in and out of that place.

Answer 5

Because of female hormones, they just are made differently, but I think they are made perfectly, I love women.

Answer 6

That's the same with all species of mammals.

Answer 7

Our physical size and strength is more compacted into the uterus.

Answer 8

thats not necessarily true. i know quite a lot of women that are very tall and some very short men.