The “weaker sex” myth has never been less true than it is today, when scientific evidence about the strength, intelligence, and resilience of a woman’s body just keeps piling up.
Of course, there’s not quite as much evidence as there should be, as it wasn’t until 1993 that the National Institutes of Health even required researchers to include women in medical studies. Further, only 30% of the world’s researchers are women, subjects in sports research are only 30% to 40%, and only 6% of sports research looks exclusively at women.
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But we digress. Because what scientists have learned about the female body has been nothing short of inspiring. Here, five studies that beautifully show off the strengths of women.
Pregnant Women Are as Strong as Endurance Athletes
A study by Duke University’s Herman Pontzner in 2019 looked at basal metabolic rates, meaning how many calories you need to function while at rest, and found the most anyone can sustain is operate at 2.5 times their BMR.
While ultra marathoners and other extreme athletes can peak from between 3.5 to 15.6 (briefly, for runners) times their BMR, Pontzner found that a pregnant woman operates at 2.2 times her BMR — almost the maximum possible, every day for nine months.
Duke University’s Herman Pontzner found that pregnant women are operating with the same metabolic band as endurance athletes — but for 9 months straight.
“Pregnancy of course is very long compared to other sporting events, but pregnant and lactating women seem to be working close to the boundary for their duration,” study co-author John Speakman told the New York Post at the time. And, said Pontzer, “I’ve had a few friends — including my wife — tell me it was good to see pregnancy recognized as extremely challenging.”
Having Babies Can Be a Superpower
Coming out of the Boston University School of Medicine a decade ago was an exciting discovery of the Long Life Family Study. It found that women who gave birth to a baby when they were over 33 were afforded with a striking benefit: They lived longer — with twice the odds of living past 95 — than women who stopped having babies before turning 30.
While that doesn’t necessarily mean all women should put off childbirth in an attempt to live longer, the natural ability to have a child at a more advanced age could indicate “that a woman’s reproductive system is aging slowly, and therefore so is the rest of her body,” said study co-author Thomas Perls at the time.
Take that, “geriatric pregnancy” naysayers!
Women’s Unique Fat Cells Are a Key to Health and Energy
It’s no secret that men are more likely to carry extra weight in their guts while pre-menopausal women store it in their butts, thighs, and hips. That’s bad news for men, as belly fat has been associated with diseases from diabetes and heart disease, while women are generally protected (until menopause).
What does that say about women’s fat cells and their health?
Dr. Deborah Clegg, assistant professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, found in a study that estrogen plays a central role in what’s called metabolic flexibility, or the body’s ability to shift between glucose and far or other fuel sources.
“Our research has shown that the female fat cell is completely different than the male fat cell. The female fat cell is like spandex—it can stretch, taking up all the excess fatty acids and calories and storing it in a really healthy way,” says Clegg.
Male fat cells lack this capacity, increasing the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But women’s flexible fat cells can more easily expand and contract through the demands of life — pregnancy, weight fluctuation, and endurance exercise.
And when it comes to sustaining energy over long periods, it’s “more beneficial to be a female than it is to be a male,” Clegg said. “The ability to flip between the two different energy substrates, glucose and fatty acids, also gives you a survival and a health benefit.”
Estrogen Also Supports Brain Health
Estrogen has been found to offer neuroprotective properties that reduce inflammation, help preserve cognitive function, and correlate with lower rates of stroke and Alzheimer’s disease earlier in life.
Earlier this year, Researchers from the University of Kansas found a link between reproductive hormone exposure throughout life and brain health in women aged 65 to 80, publishing their findings in NeuroImage. They discovered older women who had used hormonal birth control in young adulthood were more likely to have larger volumes in brain regions vital to memory, cognition and information processing, but that such a benefit could also come from hormone therapy later in life and natural hormone exposure.
“Estrogen is neuroprotective,” said co-lead author Amber Watts. “It’s beneficial for white matter integrity. It helps protect neurons and strengthens neural connections. It is also important for vascular function. One of the things we get wrong about estrogen is people think of estrogen as this thing that has to do with reproduction. But really, estrogen is very important for a lot of different body systems. It’s important for the brain, it’s important for the heart, it’s important for bone density, and it’s important for the immune system.”
Women Have Stronger Immune Systems
Women have immune systems that have long been found to fight infections more aggressively than men’s, which helps protect them better from dangerous germs (though, on the downside, it also increases the risk of autoimmune diseases, by which the immune system mistakenly attacks the body).
In 2021, a study out of the Manchester Cancer Research Centre found that women may have stronger immune responses to squamous cell skin cancer, for example. “It has long been assumed that men are at higher risk of getting non-melanoma skin cancer than women,” said lead author Dr Amaya Viros. “Other lifestyle and behavioral differences between men, such as the type of work or exposure to the sun are likely to be significant.”
However, Viros noted, “we also identify for the first time the possible biological reasons, rooted in the immune system, which explains why men may have more severe disease.”
Later, a 2022 study suggested that pregnancy may have helped drive the immunity difference over evolution, as mothers can pass infections to their babies and women may have evolved stronger defenses against relatively mild germs. Men, who are less involved in this mother-to-child transmission, may have evolved weaker defenses against more aggressive infections.
