Typical russian man and woman

Men and women have grown taller over the last century, with South Korean women shooting up by more than 20cm 7. A comprehensive global study looked at the average height of year old men and women in countries between and The results reveal that while Swedes were the tallest people in the world in , Dutch men have risen from 12th place to claim top spot with an average height of Latvian women, meanwhile, rose from 28th place in to become the tallest in the world a century later, with an average height of With an increase in height seen across the century in every country around the world, the British have also gained a few inches.

Bertrand Desjardins, a researcher in the demography department of the University of Montreal, explains. Men dying sooner than women makes sense biologically: because males are born for every females, it would assure that there are about the same number of men and women at reproductive ages. But even though women showed a longer life expectancy in almost every human society in the last decade of the 20th century, the size of the advantage varied greatly. For example, in the U. The discrepancy was much greater in some countries, with the difference in Russia reaching more than 12 years, but in others, such as India 0. The diversity in worldwide longevity alone indicates that the difference in mortality between the sexes is not purely biological and that there are intervening social factors. The current range of situations actually reflects different stages of a three-part historical evolution.

Many extreme examples exist: Peacocks far outclass peahens, for instance, while female anglerfish both outsize and outwit their tiny, rudimentary, parasitic male counterparts. Unlike those animals, men and women are more physically similar than we are different. Nonetheless, there are a few key distinctions in our physiques. Some of them are designed to suit each sex for the role it plays in reproduction, while others exist to help us tell each other apart and to aid in our mutual attraction.

But when it comes to the home front, traditional values dominate , writes Claire Cain Miller. Nearly one-quarter of high school seniors, when asked about the ideal at-home arrangement, favored a setup where — you guessed it — Dad works full time for pay and Mom stays home for free. These attitudes bear out in practice too: Men between ages 18 and 34 in opposite-sex relationships are no more likely than older couples to divide household labor equitably. I caught up with Claire Cain Miller, a New York Times correspondent who writes about gender, families and the future of work. Ever wonder how unpaid work breaks down along gender lines and whether some chores are better than others?