Zach Bedford: March 2011

1. Women drive better than men.

Well this reverses a social myth – that women are bad drivers. Carnegie Mellon University researchers found after analyzing a lot of traffic data in 2007 that men are 77% more likely to die in a car accident than women, keeping the miles driven constant. So next time when your husband asks you to hand over the car keys, just give him this article.

2. Women remember appearances better than men.

Some would say, “Why not? Don’t women pay all their attention to appearances?” Well, say what you may, but only a loser complains about somebody for being better than him! Terrence Horgan, research fellow in psychology at Ohio State University, and her co-researchers found in a study that women are more accurate in describing appearances after seeing people once. The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

3. Women cooperate better than men.

We can see this everywhere, but still if you want a citation, here it is. A study by Rolf Kuemmerli and other researchers at Edinburgh and Lausanne universities indicated that women cooperate better than men. In the research, based on games played by 100 Swiss students, women cooperated with others almost twice as much as men did.

4.Women eat better than men.

This is probably not so obvious, for rarely do we notice gender differences in eating habits. A survey involving 14000 Americans, conducted by University of Minnesota, revealed that men are more likely to eat frozen pizza and meat, whereas women are more likely to eat fruits and vegetables.

5. Women perform better than men in timed tests.

So if time is precious, women are better at preserving it than men. A study by Vanderbilt University researchers in 2006 found that women score better in timed intelligence tests than men. The study, published in the May-June issue of the journal Intelligence, didn’t find much difference in un-timed tests, which meant women had a quicker mind.

6. Women perceive their relationships better than men.

Talk about relationships and most men will frown. Now you know why – they know so little about their relationships! A Hebrew University of Jerusalem study, after surveying 97 couples in the United States, found that women are more perceptive than men in describing their relationships. The study, published in ScienceDaily, reported that women were much more accurate in describing the perception of their partners than men.

7. Women communicate better than men.
This is now scientifically proven and acknowledged. Louann Brizendine, neuro-pyschiatrist at the University of California at San Francisco, found in a study that women can process 20000 words a day compared to men’s 7000 words (Louann Brizendine,The Female Brain, Morgan Road Books). This difference, as per Brizendine’s study, is more biological than social, which starts as early as the fetal stage.

8. Women learn better than men.

That is why girls get better grades in school on an average than boys in many parts of the world. Dr Simone Kruger of Edge Hill University, UK, found in her research based on remote learners that women learners were more successful in sharing ideas and experiences with each other, and hence learnt more efficiently than men.

9. Women invest better than men.

You don’t believe it, do you? We all know fewer women invest in stocks than men do, but the few women who invest in shares do better than their male counterparts. A study by the National Association of Investors Corporation (NAIC) for the University of California found that women earn on an average 1.4% more than men in their share portfolios.

10. Women cope with stress better than men.

A study at the University of California, Los Angeles, published in the July 2000 issue of Psychological Review, found some biological and behavioral differences in the ways men and women cope with stress. It found that women tend to seek contact with others and social support when they are under stress, which is a psychologically much better way of coping with stress than the “fight-or-flight” approach of men.