The Cloisterstudy - Or is there a biological age gap between men and women?

A data-heavy posting, more formating and translation work than anything else:

The starting point and until today the most important research project of the cloister study is the question if male excess mortality (in the industrialized countries currently 5-8 years in life expectancy at birth) is mainly caused by biological factors (genetic or hormonal differences) or non-biological factors (differences in life-style or environmental issues). The fact that non-biological risk factors can be largely ruled out inside the catholic cloistered population allows testing the impact of biological causes on female survival advantages. The works of this study have been awarded with the first prize for researches by young scholars of the German Foundation for World Population (DSW) and the German Association for Demography (DGD) in 1998 and with the Gunther Beyer Award of the European Association of Population Studies (EAPS) in 2003.

Numbers of individuals, deaths, and person-years at risk lived above age 25 of Bavarian nuns and monks during the observation periods

Bavarian Nuns                Bavarian Monks
----------------------------------------------------------------
Period      lived years      C.D.R.      lived years      C.D.R.
----------------------------------------------------------------
1955/1985     87.944,99       20,49        37.194,32       18,26
1960/1990     81.518,14       22,98        35.752,86       20,67
1965/1995     73.506,72       26,24        33.592,63       23,37
----------------------------------------------------------------
C.D.R. = Crude death rate

Life expectancy at age 25 e25 for females and males of the general German population and for Bavarian nuns and monks with prevailing sex differences

German Population                Bavarian Nuns and Monks
---------------------------------------------------------------
Mortality table  difference      Mortality table  difference
---------------------------------------------------------------
1960/1962              4,55       1946/1976             0,71*
1964/1966              5,03       1950/1980             0,99*
1970/1972              5,49       1955/1985             0,80*
1974/1976              5,73       1960/1990             1,57*
1979/1981              6,06       1965/1995             2,27*
---------------------------------------------------------------
* Statistical signifcant difference from the German 
population on the 95%-confidence-level

Numbers of individuals, deaths, and person-years at risk lived above age 25 of Bavarian nuns and monks during the observation periods

Bavarian Nuns                                                          Bavarian Monks
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Period        Persons        Deaths     lived years      C.D.R.        Persons        Deaths     lived years      C.D.R.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1955/1985       4.082         1.802       87.944,99       20,49          1.788           679       37.194,32       18,26
1960/1990       3.828         1.873       81.518,14       22,98          1.744           739       35.752,86       20,67
1965/1995       3.543         1.929       73.506,72       26,24          1.702           785       33.592,63       23,37
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C.D.R. = Crude death rate

Life expectancy at age 25 e25 for females and males of the general German population and for Bavarian nuns and monks with prevailing sex differences

German Population                                  Bavarian Nuns and Monks
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mortality table   Women      Men  difference       Mortality table    Women      Men  difference
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1960/1962         50,33    45,78        4,55       1946/1976          49,12*   48,41*       0,71*
1964/1966         50,89    45,86        5,03       1950/1980          50,05*   49,06*       0,99*
1970/1972         51,14    45,65        5,49       1955/1985          50,95    50,15*       0,80*
1974/1976         51,79    46,06        5,73       1960/1990          51,88    50,31*       1,57*
1979/1981         53,05    46,99        6,06       1965/1995          52,88    50,61*       2,27*
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Statistical signifcant difference from the German population on the 95%-confidence-level

Life expectancy at age 25 for German females and males and for Bav. nuns and monks represented at the mid calendar year of the observation periods

Frauen = Women | Männer = Men | Nonnen = Nuns | Mönche = Monks

In conclusion, if there is a biological difference, the difference is very small (about 2 years). To answer the question why men die earlier, we have to look at many different factors and I will eventually do so in another post. Nevertheless male health does not have the same focus female health has and without a doubt the difference in mortality rates is another reason we should have a closer look at men's health.

Capitalism and feminism

More than once I have heard feminists claim that patriarchy equals capitalism and that they want to get rid of both.

Some food for thought...

"It is unfortunate today that many advocate's of women's rights mistakenly regard capitalism as their enemy. The historical truth is that it was capitalism that made it possible for a woman to earn an independent living. It was capitalism, with its underlying philosophy of individualism, that made the emergence of contemporary feminism historically inevitable." - Nathaniel Branden - The Psychology of romantic love

Obama on fathers

Barack Obama has announced that men 'need to be knocked across the head' to see the imbalance between how much work fathers and mothers put into raising children.

The U.S. president said he knew it was not fair for his wife Michelle to have to 'make sacrifices' all the time.

Recently in the Daily Mail and really nothing new by Obama as he critisized fathers before.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we'll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing - missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.

Besides the obvious double standard (no one would suggest one should ever knock anything on mothers heads), President Obama seems to have a very simple view of things when it comes to parenthood. Overworked mothers, feckless fathers and a need to push men in the right direction.

A simple view indeed. What about trusting Joe and Jane Normal they both are able to figure out how to arrange their family life, due to their best interests and abilities (as President Obama and his wife obviously have done). And looking at time tables we find out that men actually work as much as women. So the average person already balances this out. Also keep in mind that men are doing more housework and child care than ever and a lot of working dads would consider to be a SAHD and the deadbeat dads we learn about are often "dead broke" dads. In addition, we do not have to forget injustices fathers compared to mother face when it comes to divorce courts or seeing their children after all (PAS).


So what is happening here? Obama is basicly spitting into fathers faces and saying, do more. And contrary to popular believe fathers are already doing there equal share and considering to do more child caring (and less work) if they could financially, while other fathers who want to be good parents are denied their possibility to see their own children.

Society, divorce courts and the law already regard fathers as second class parents, we don´t need another one that undermines fathers.

What he could have done would be reaching out to fathers. Realising the plights fathers are having, removing the injustices, helping to put fathers on the same podest mothers are now on (or removing this podest completely). This would have let to more fathers being with their children. But what did you expect from a guy that talks about deadbeat dads on father's day? (We don´t talk about mothers abusing children on mother's day or about the vile acts christians have done on X-mas)

It is time to say something nice about fathers.

Trafficking: Blown out of proportion?

Another post about trafficking. And I am pretty sure simply by saying trafficking you know that I actually talk about the 4% of slaves that are forced into prostituion (instead of the 96% of labour slaves).

Anyhow, a recent move against trafficking in the UK really went the wrong way (found via Glenn Sack's blog).

The Home Office estimates that there are between 6,000 and 18,000 trafficked women and girls being forced to work as prostitutes in the UK.

[...]

The UK's biggest ever investigation of sex trafficking failed to find a single person who had forced anybody into prostitution in spite of hundreds of raids on sex workers in a six-month campaign by government departments, specialist agencies and every police force in the country.

[...]

Current and former ministers have claimed that thousands of women have been imported into the UK and forced to work as sex slaves, but most of these statements were either based on distortions of quoted sources or fabrications without any source at all.

Ouch...in a follow up post, we learn that the officials had a hard time to find any evidence for the thousands of trafficked women at all. Also another interesting comment.

Nikki Adams, for her part, has some ideas about that. She and her organization have defended sex workers in court and attempted to help them in many ways for years. She says that in all that time of helping prostitutes in the United Kingdom, she has encountered a grand total of two who had been coerced into the trade. Her very strong opinion is that essentially all prostitutes engage in sex for hire as their free choice for the purposes of earning an income. That view, of course, accords with the findings (or non-findings) of Operation Parameter Two, the police sweep of houses of prostitution, that found no traffickers whatsoever.

After reading this I was reminded of a similar case in Germany. Googling "trafficking world cup Germany" will get you many results. An example

It has been estimated that some 40,000 women, many under age, will have been be illegally trafficked into Germany for the World cup games. Germany, like most countries, has had a problem of illegal trafficking for some time but what is unusual is the scale of the trafficking and the fact that Germany is making so many plans to encourage it.

In Berlin, close to the Olympic stadium, a new mega-brothel has just opened. Covering some 400 square meters, it houses a health club, restaurants, and some 70 rooms where up to 600 clients a day may be serviced. Similar brothels in Cologne and Dortmund will open before the games begin. Other cities have set up drive-thru centers, nicknamed “ Verrichtungsbox” roughly translated as “performance boxes” where sex will be performed in small cubicles to ensure the anonymity of the clients.

One of many articles. No matter what you heard, the 40,000 under-age trafficked prostitutes where all over the net. Apparently just in the net.

Last summer, lurid headlines claimed that 40,000 women would be smuggled by sex slavers into Germany to be prostituted to World Cup football fans. The truth is very different indeed. Newly unrestricted European Union documents reveal that the German police uncovered just five cases of ‘human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation’ related to the international football tournament.

Despite a huge ‘awareness-raising’ campaign, the setting up of telephone hotlines run by non-governmental organisations, and extra police checks on Germany’s borders, the prostitution scare stories, boosted by an unholy alliance of European left-wingers, feminists, police officers, Christians, the American right and US President George W Bush, have turned out to be pure fiction.

[...]

‘The increase in forced prostitution and human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation during the 2006 World Cup in Germany which was feared by some did not materialise’, concludes one report. ‘There was no sign whatsoever of the alleged 40,000 prostitutes/forced prostitutes - a figure repeatedly reported, also in international media - who were to be brought to Germany for the 2006 World Cup.’

German police officers and border guards stepped up operations in the run-up to and during the World Cup, but the huge effort failed to find the pimps, or their victims, said to be swarming across Europe’s frontiers.

[...]

In contrast to the horror stories involving enslaved Africans, Latin Americans, Asians or Russians, the five were from countries that are members of the EU, or which were soon to be members, and all were entitled to travel freely to Germany; indeed, one was actually a German. Of the others, two were from Bulgaria, one from the Czech Republic, another Hungarian victim was a 20-year-old man.

[...]

‘Fifty-one cases of forced prostitution were discovered, 23 of those were suspicions, 28 cases proved to be cases of forced prostitution’, says the report. ‘However, all these cases, as all calls in general, were not connected to the FIFA World Cup, but to trafficking in general.’

It really makes you wonder where these high numbers come from. Probably not the most reliable sources.

The Global Gender Gap Report 2009 - A misleading name

The new "Global Gender Gap Report" is out. In this report, gender equality is rated by:

Economic participation and opportunity
Educational attainment
Political empowerment
Health and survival

My biggest problem with this report is the misleading name as this reports does tell us more about womens' position in society than about gender equality. I cite:

Gender equality vs. women’s empowerment

The third distinguishing feature of the Global Gender Gap Index is that it ranks countries according to their proximity to gender equality rather than to women’s empowerment. Our aim is to focus on whether the gap between women and men in the chosen variables has declined, rather than whether women are “winning” the “battle of the sexes”. Hence, the Index rewards countries that reach the point where outcomes for women equal those for men, but it neither rewards nor penalizes cases in which women are outperforming men in particular variables.

If you ever spend some time thinking about gender equality in western countries you will certainly be able to pretend the outcome. Men will lead in the economic and political category, while women will lead in the educational and health/survival categories. This report has an interesting way to define gender equality.

Let us take Russia as an example. Wikipedia tells me the life expectancy for Russian men is almost 14 years lower than for Russian women (data from 2009). Life expectancy is besides sex ratio at birth the only criteria for the "Health and Survival" category.

When it comes to education, the report looks at the following criterias:

Female literacy rate over male value
Female net primary level enrolment over male value
Female net secondary level enrolment over male value
Female gross tertiary level enrolment over male value

And what can I say, Russian women are doing very well here, too. For the first 3 itmes the ratio is equal, for the last one the female-to-male ratio is 1.35 (for 100 men on Russian universities there are 135 women).

Now the above results for women, as rated by the report, would lead to a horrible rating in the category, but as we are talking about men here

we apparently have gender equality. If it isn´t cynical to call a difference in life expectancy of almost 14 years gender equality, I don´t know what is. And cynical might be the wrong word here.

Men and women working - The American Time Use Survey

A warning, this post is all about numbers. If this is not your kind of thing, skip this one.

This is a recurring topic and a myth that is in the media every now and then. A woman's work is never done and while she has a career, she still has to do most of the housework while hubby does nothing more than sitting on the couch watching TV. Luckily, the Bureau of Labour Statistics has counted the amount of minutes, men and women work so we can see how fair men and women share their work.

About this Survey:

American Time Use Survey

Data collection for the ATUS began in January 2003. Sample cases for the survey are selected monthly and interviews are conducted continuously throughout the year. In 2008, approximately 12,700 individuals were interviewed. Estimates are released annually.

I drew all numbers from table 3. Using these columns.

House - Household Activities
Care1 - Caring for and helping household members
Care2 - Caring for and helping non-household members
Work - Work and work-related activities
Edu - Educational activities

A first look.

Time spent in primary activities (1) for the civilian population by age, sex, race, Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, marital status, and educational attainment, 2008 annual averages

Average hours per day spent in primary activities (2)  

                               House   Care1   Care2    Work     Edu     Sum  
Men, 15 years and over......    1.30     .36     .18    4.52     .30    6.66
Women, 15 years and over....    2.13     .70     .27    2.99     .52    6.61

Very obvious, the average man works more, while the average woman does more childcare and housework. In total not much of a difference (men working 3 minutes more).

A closer look.

                               House   Care1   Care2    Work     Edu     Sum 
Marital status and sex:
 Married, spouse present....    2.01     .76     .23    4.06     .10    7.16
  Men.......................    1.50     .55     .18    4.94     .06    7.23
  Women.....................    2.53     .97     .29    3.16     .15    7.10
 Other marital statuses.....    1.40     .27     .22    3.35     .90    6.14
  Men.......................    1.05     .12     .19    3.98     .88    6.22
  Women.....................    1.70     .41     .25    2.82     .91    6.09

Again we have a small difference with a little bit more workload for men. One could argue that I should have taken "Purchasing goods and services" into account which of course includes buying groceries for the family. While this is true I could argue that his also includes personal shoppings, nail, tanning and hair salons, which, taking a wild guess here, women spend more time with than men. But before we start bickering about numbers, even when we include them in total the difference is between 11-12 minutes this time with slightly more workload for women.

I have seen another take on this issue. Sometimes an analysis focuses on leisure time and we see men having more leisure time than women. This is true for this survey as well. Now we know there is not that much of a difference when it comes to the daily grind. So why do women have less leisure time? A look at the other columns:

Personal - Personal care activities
Shop - Purchasing goods and services
Eat - Eating and drinking
Org - Organisational, civic and religious activities
Tele - Telephon calls, mails and e-mails
Leisure - Leisure and sports

Average hours per day spent in primary activities (2)  

                          Personal   Eat  Shop   Org  Tele Other  Leisure   Sum
Men, 15 years and over......  9.22  1.28   .60   .30   .14   .17  5.52    17.23
Women, 15 years and over....  9.55  1.18   .92   .37   .28   .24  4.86    17.40

Marital status and sex:
 Married, spouse present....  9.11  1.32   .82   .40   .16   .21  4.81    16.83
  Men.......................  8.92  1.39   .65   .38   .10   .17  5.17    16.78
  Women.....................  9.31  1.26   .99   .43   .22   .25  4.44    16.90
 Other marital statuses.....  9.71  1.12   .71   .26   .27   .19  5.60    17.86
  Men.......................  9.61  1.15   .54   .20   .18   .16  5.96    17.80
  Women.....................  9.81  1.10   .85   .31   .35   .22  5.30    17.94

Time differences here between 7 and 10 minutes. Also we can see that difference in leisure time is not a result of unfair distribution of work. Interestingly the above confirms many stereotypes. Men spend more time eating and doing sports and other leisure activities, while women take more time for personal care, shopping, chatting with others as well as religious and civic activities. Of course one can again argue that shopping doesn't belong in there as grocery shopping can be considered housework, but then again, the difference is just a few minutes.

In conclusion we can say, besides the myths, men and women in the USA are able to share their workload fairly. While of course there will be male couch potatoes and overworked wifes (as well as the other way round), this is not true for the average couple.

Military Sexual Assault - Add on

Rape victims in the military again. As noticed by TS, (link to the original article) those victims fall under the radar as well.

Some numbers:

There is a widespread presumption that most victims of sexual assault in the military services are women. That presumption, however, is false.

In a 2006 survey of active-duty troops, 6.8 percent of women and 1.8 percent of men said they had experienced unwanted sexual contact in the previous 12 months. Since there are far more men than women in the services, that translates into roughly 22,000 men and 14,000 women.

Among women, the number of victims who report their assaults is small. Among men, it is infinitesimal. Last year the services received 2,530 reports of sexual assault involving female victims – and 220 involving male victims.

According to a 2007 study by a team of VA researchers, a nationwide screening of veterans seeking VA services turned up more than 60,000 with sexual trauma. More than half of those – nearly 32,000 – were men.

And a common theme emerges again. Although most victims are men, men are far less likely to tell.

The effect that activism can have on rape rates is quite impressive.

Reported rapes have fallen to the lowest level in 20 years as DNA evidence helps send more rapists to prison and victims are more willing to work with police and prosecutors, victims advocates and crime researchers say. 

 

The FBI estimates 89,000 women reported being raped in 2008 — 29 women for every 100,000 people. That's down from a high of 109,062 reported rapes in 1992 — 43 women for every 100,000 people.

Keep in mind that raising awareness should have a different effect on the rape rates as more people are reporting. This makes the decline even more impressive. (Although the article mentions FBI data, I am pretty sure we are talking about the National Crime Victimization Survey.)


I guess it is time to look at every victim.