There’s no denying it – women are awesome! Unfortunately however, they haven’t always had the smoothest ride in society.
Women only gained the right to vote in 1918 after a long campaign in which one woman, Emily Davison, was killed when she ran out in front of the King’s horse at Epsom.
Unfortunately, women are still campaigning for equal pay amongst a host of other things.
We’re hoping that one day soon, this will very much be the case in all industries, because let’s face it…they’re the best!
Did you know, for example, that in Algeria, the largest country in Africa and 35th in world population, women make up 70% of the country’s lawyers and 60% of its judges, as well as dominating the field of medicine.
Increasingly, women are contributing more to household income than men. 60% of university students are women.
Did you also know that First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt campaigned for more female journalists in America by only allowing female journalists at her press conferences, ensuring that newspapers would have to hire them.
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Some countries today have some very bizarre laws when it comes to women.
For example, In Saudi Arabia, women are allowed to fly aircraft, though they must be chauffeured to the airport because it’s illegal for them to drive a car. This is just crazy!
Women in South Asia used to have it bad in the past.
Widowed women were once routinely burned alive on their husbands’ funeral pyres.
A British general outlawed it, saying “This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile, but my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them.”
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To celebrate woman all over the world, here are 15 interesting facts about women that you may not have heard before…
1. The word ‘woman’ itself comes from Middle England.
The word itself meant ‘wife of the man’, although I’m sure a lot of people out there will assure you that that’s a tad outdated nowadays!
The Wikipedia definition today is “a female human being.”
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Interestingly, the word ‘girl’ originally meant a young person of either sex in English, so young boys would also be referred to as girls.
It was only around the beginning of the 16th century that the word came to mean specifically a female child.
It is a popular misconception that the term “woman” is etymologically connected to “womb”.
“Womb” is actually from the Old English word wambemeaning “stomach” (modern German retains the colloquial term “Wampe” from Middle High German for “potbelly”).
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2. Out of any mammal, human women have the largest breasts.
On average, that is.
Humans are an anomaly in that no other primate has a permanent breast.
During lactation, all ape species develop a full breast to store milk.
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In non-human primates and other mammal species, a full breast is a clear sign that the female is suckling young.
Men are attracted to features about a woman that make her look different from a man.
The male and female bodies are very similar with the main differences being a woman’s obvious feminine features and the differences between our genitals.
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3. Some women can see millions more colours than the rest of us.
The have genetic mutations which enables them to do this – that’s pretty cool, and we’re very jealous!
The average person can seen about one million colours, but a tetrachromats, those who can see more, have an extra cone class in their eyes for colour vision that dramatically increases their range up to a potential 99 million.
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Tetrachromacy is the condition of possessing four independent channels for conveying colour information – which means four different types of cone cells in the eye.
Lots of animals are tetrachromats, including birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and insects
Most people have three types of cones, tetrachromats have four types.
We think it would be pretty cool to see all of those extra colours!
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4. There are 9 million more females than males in Russia.
Russia has been mostly female since World War 2.
Many Societ men died in battle or left the country to fight.
In 1950, there were just 76.6 men per 100 women in the territory that is now Russia.
That number rose steadily in subsequent decades, climbing to 88.4 by 1995 before declining again.
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Russian women born from 2010 to 2015 are expected to live to age 75.6, while Russian men are expected to live to age 64.2, a gap of 11.4 years.
Other former USSR countries, such as Belarus, Ukraine and Latvia, have similarly high gaps, with many men in this area losing their lives to alcohol-related incidents, suicides and diseases.
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5. Women tend to blink a lot more than men.
In fact, it’s around twice as often. And you’re now aware of your own blinking – sorry!!
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They blink more often than men due to the higher levels of the hormone estrogen within their system. The hormone stimulates the production of lubricants in the body, including the eye.
Those women who are on birth control pill and have increased levels of the hormone will blink up to 32% more than other women.
Animal studies have shown that blink rates are influenced by the amount of dopamine that travels to that section of the brain.
We also tend to blink when we are more nervous.
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Sometimes even if people are talking with each other they take over the frequency of blinking if the other person is nervous.
6. 2% of women have supernumerary.
What do Mark Wahlberg, Tilda Swinton, Lily Allen, and Bill Paxton have in common? Answer – they have an extra nipple, one more than is usual.
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There are some humans who have many as six additional nipples!
The nipples appear along the two vertical “milk lines,” which start in the armpit on each side, run down through the typical nipples and end at the groin.
Although usually presenting on the milk line, pseudomamma can appear as far away as the foot.
He estimated that around one in 500 humans, or 0.2%, have “supernumerary nipples” – that is, a number of nipples greater than two.
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The knowledge of extra nipples long predates the advent of modern medicine. The ancient Greeks sometimes depicted their goddess Artemis with multiple breasts.
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7. Women have different symptoms of a heart attack.
Instead of the standard chest pains you’d look for, women suffer from nausea, shoulder pain and indigestion.
Overall, 42% of men with a heart attack reported chest pain, compared with 30.7% of women.
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Women are also more likely to experience a heart attack older when compared to men (73.9 years old compared with 66.5 years old).
If someone has had a heart attack, it’s important to rest while they wait for an ambulance, to avoid unnecessary strain on the heart.
If aspirin is easily available and the person who has had a heart attack isn’t allergic to it, slowly chew and then swallow an adult-sized tablet (300mg) while waiting for the ambulance.
The aspirin helps to thin the blood and restore the heart’s blood supply.
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8. A lot of women’s lives are lost during childbirth or pregnancy.
In fact, a woman dies of these causes every 90 seconds…
In the United States, the maternal death rate averaged 9.1 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births during the years 1979–1986, but then rose rapidly to 14 per 100,000 in 2000 and 17.8 per 100,000 in 2009.
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In 2013 the rate was 18.5 deaths per 100,000 live births, with some 800 maternal deaths reported.
A recent report suggests that two in five deaths among UK mothers who die in pregnancy or shortly afterwards could be prevented with better care.
A detailed examination of 124 maternal deaths found 41% may have been prevented if they had received gold-standard care.
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9. Women are more likely to trust someone after a hug for at least 20 seconds.
So bring in the love and give someone a hug!
Hugging releases oxytocin, which is a hormone that reduces stress in your body.
Even if you hug someone for ten seconds in a day, it lowers down your blood pressure and helps in keeping you optimistic in life.
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Hugging also helps lower the risk of heart diseases.
So go and give somebody a hug today!
10. Ada Lovelace was the first ever computer programmer.
She did her work on one of the world’s first computers, the Analytical Engine.
She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine.
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As a result, she is sometimes regarded as the first to recognise the full potential of a “computing machine” and the first computer programmer.
She was the only child of the famous poet, Lord Byron.
Ada didn’t live a long life, however.
She died of uterine cancer in 1852 at the age of 36.
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11. A study says that the amount you snore during pregnancy results to the size of your baby.
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It said that women who snore while they’re pregnant are more likely to have smaller sized babies.
Snoring during pregnancy was also linked to higher rates of Caesarean delivery.
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Experts said snoring may be a sign of breathing problems that could deprive an unborn baby of oxygen.
Chronic snorers, who snored both before and during pregnancy, were two thirds more likely to have a baby whose weight was in the bottom 10 per cent.
They were also more than twice as likely to need an elective Caesarean delivery, or C-section, compared with non-snorers.
12. Women have a more flexible neck than men.
Have you ever noticed that women will usually just turn their head to react to something, while men will turn their entire bodies?
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In fact, they’re supposed to be more flexible overall.
A study suggests that females have a stronger and more bendy, lower back than males.
The differences evolved over millions of years to let expectant mothers stay mobile during pregnancy without the weight of a baby causing them to topple over.
Muscle are made of a mix of different kind of fibers.
Muscles of women have more fibers of the kind that gives them the ability to stretch more easily and to repair faster. They are also more resistant to fatigue.
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Muscle of men have more fibers of the kind that gives them more strength and power.
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13. Venus is the only planet to be given a female goddess’ name.
Venus is the Roman goddess whose functions encompassed love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity and victory.
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In Roman mythology, Venus was the mother of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas., who survived the fall of Troy.
Venus is similar to Earth in size and mass, and is often described as Earth’s “sister” or “twin”
Venus is one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been a major fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed.
Venus was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as early as the second millennium BC.
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14. It’s been said that taller women are more susceptible to cancer than shorter women.
As reported here.
Specifically, for every extra 5 cm in height the increased risk of the six cancers is as follows:
- Kidney (10% increased risk)
- Pre- and post-menopausal breast cancer (9% and 11% increased risk respectively)
- Ovarian (8% increased risk)
- Pancreatic (7% increased risk)
- Colorectal (5% increased risk)
- Prostate (4% increased risk)
Although there’s nothing you can do about your height, so we’re not sure what good this info is.
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15. An average women speaks 13,000 more words per day than the average man.
It’s been said that females say around 20,000 words a day. And it’s all to do with the Foxp2 protein.
A study just published suggests that higher levels of the protein are found in the female brain.
US researchers found that those with more Foxp2, known as the ‘language protein’, in their brains were the chattier. Among humans that was women, but in rats it was the males.
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Studies have shown that the female love of chit-chat begins at a young age.
Girls learn to speak earlier and more quickly than boys.
They produce their first words and sentences earlier, have larger vocabularies and use a greater variety of sentence types than boys of the same age.
16. Women in Space
On 5th April 2010, there were four women in space at the same time. That is the largest female gathering off planet to that point.
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These four women were Tracey E Caldwell Dyson, Stephanie Wilson, Naoko Yamazaki and Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger.
Tracey is a Ph.D and has been working at NASA in a variety of roles including working with the Russian Federal Space Agency.
Stephanie is the second African American woman to go in to space, flying her first mission on Independence Day 2006 (Mission STS-121 to be exact).
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Naoko was born in Matsudo City and graduated from the University of Tokyo with a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering in 1996.
Dorothy is a former school teacher.
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17. France in the 1500s…
In France in the 1500s, women could charge their husbands with impotence.
He would have to become erect and show he could ejaculate in a courtroom.
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If he failed, he could demand a Trial by Congress and attempt to have sex with his wife in front of the experts.
The legal tradition dated to the 1300s, when theologians agreed that the true aim of matrimony was procreation.
So there you go folks, fifteen interesting facts about women! Perhaps if this article was written by one, it would have been 13,000 words longer…and all because of some extra protein.
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