Why are Women More Religious than Men? Do Risk Preferences and Genetic Risk Predispositions Explain the Gender Gap?
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Li YI
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7566885 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:BackgroundThe number of female smokers developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is rapidly increasing, but whether or not there exists a differential susceptibility by gender remains controversial.MethodsHow smoking behaviour and subsequent lung function reduction differed by gender was examined in a study including 954 subjects with COPD and 955 subjects without COPD. The study focused on two subgroups: subjects with COPD <60 years of age (early-onset group, n=316) and subjects with COPD with <20 pack-years of smoking (low exposure group, n=241).ResultsIn the low exposure group, female subjects with COPD had lower forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV(1)) % predicted (48.7% vs 55.8%, p=0.001) and more severe disease (50.4% vs 35.6%, p=0.020, in GOLD (Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease) stage 3 and 4) than male subjects with COPD. Females also had lower FEV(1)% predicted (50.6% vs 56.0%, p=0.006) and more severe COPD (41.7% vs 31.1% in GOLD stage 3 and 4, p=0.050) in the early-onset group. Using multivariate regression, female gender was associated with 5.7% lower FEV(1)% predicted in the low exposure group (p=0.012) and a similar trend was observed in the early-onset group (p=0.057). The number of pack-years was not significantly associated with lung function in female subjects with COPD in this study, and the dose-response relationship between smoking and lung function differed by gender at lower levels of smoking exposure. Interaction analysis suggested that the effect of smoking on lung function might be different by gender (p=0.027 in all subjects with COPD).ConclusionsFemale gender was associated with lung function reduction and more severe disease in subjects with COPD with early onset of disease or low smoking exposure. The findings may suggest a gender difference in susceptibility to the lung-damaging effects of cigarette smoking, but alternative explanations should be considered.
| S-EPMC8191512 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Generally speaking, compared to women, men are less dissatisfied with their own body and consider themselves to be better-looking and less overweight. So far, however, it is unclear whether these divergent body ratings arise from the application of double standards. With the present study, we examined whether men apply different standards to their own body than to other men's bodies and whether they differ from women in this regard. To this aim, we presented n = 104 women and n = 93 men with pictures of thin, average-weight, overweight, athletic and hypermuscular male and female bodies on a computer screen. To manipulate identification, we showed the bodies of the respective participant's gender once with the participant's own face and once with the face of another person. Identity cues, such as faces, might activate different body schemata, which influence body ratings and thus lead to the application of double standards. Participants were instructed to rate their emotional reaction to the bodies according to valence and arousal, and to rate the bodies with respect to attractiveness, body fat, and muscle mass. The application of double standards was determined by calculating the difference between the rating of a body presented with the participant's face and the rating of the same body presented with another person's face. Both women and men showed self-deprecating double standards in valence, body attractiveness, body fat and muscle mass for the overweight body. Men also revealed self-deprecating double standards for the thin, average-weight and hypermuscular bodies, but evaluated the athletic body as more attractive and with a higher positive feeling when it was presented with their own face. Women did not show any self-serving double standards and showed fewer self-deprecating double standards than men. The results indicate that men devalue non-ideal bodies and upvalue ideal bodies when they are self-related, whereas women more rate in a fair-minded manner. Thus, in contrast to women, an advantage for men may be that they are able to self-enhance in the case of desirable bodies. This ability to self-enhance regarding desirable features might be beneficial for men's self-worth and body satisfaction.
| S-EPMC6428027 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Previous research has shown that people care less about men than about women who are left behind. We show that this finding extends to the domain of labor market discrimination: In identical scenarios, people judge discrimination against women more morally bad than discrimination against men. This result holds in a representative sample of the US population and in a larger but not representative sample of Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk) respondents. We test if this gender gap is driven by statistical fairness discrimination, a process in which people use the gender of the victim to draw inferences about other characteristics which matter for their fairness judgments. We test this explanation with a survey experiment in which we explicitly hold information about the victim of discrimination constant. Our results provide only mixed support for the statistical fairness discrimination explanation. In our representative sample, we see no meaningful or significant effect of the information treatments. By contrast, in our Mturk sample, we see that providing additional information partly reduces the effect of the victim's gender on judgment of the discriminator. While people may engage in statistical fairness discrimination, this process is unlikely to be an exhaustive explanation for why discrimination against women is judged as worse.
| S-EPMC8488152 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Subtle gender dynamics in the publishing process involving collaboration, peer-review, readership, citation, and media coverage disadvantage women in academia. In this study we consider whether commenting on published work is also gendered. Using all the comments published over a 16-year period in PNAS (N = 869) and Science (N = 481), we find that there is a gender gap in the authorship of comment letters: women are less likely than men to comment on published academic research. This disparity is greater than gender differences in the publication of research articles. There is also a gendered pattern in commenting: women comment writers are relatively less likely to engage with men's research. If left unaddressed, these patterns in academic commenting could impede scholarly exchange between men and women and further marginalize women within the scientific community.
| S-EPMC7112170 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We investigated whether being attacked physically due to one's gender identity or expression was associated with suicide risk among trans men and women living in Virginia. The sample consisted of 350 transgender men and women who participated in the Virginia Transgender Health Initiative Survey (THIS). Multivariate multinomial logistic regression was used to explore the competing outcomes associated with suicidal risk. Thirty-seven percent of trans men and women experienced at least one physical attack since the age of 13. On average, individuals experienced 3.97 (SD = 2.86) physical attacks; among these about half were attributed to one's gender identity or expression (mean = 2.08, SD = 1.96). In the multivariate multinomial regression, compared to those with no risk, being physically attacked increased the odds of both attempting and contemplating suicide regardless of gender attribution. Nevertheless, the relative impact of physical victimization on suicidal behavior was higher among those who were targeted on the basis of their gender identity or expression. Finally, no significant association was found between multiple measures of institutional discrimination and suicide risk once discriminatory and non-discriminatory physical victimization was taken into account. Trans men and women experience high levels of physical abuse and face multiple forms of discrimination. They are also at an increased risk for suicidal tendencies. Interventions that help transindividuals cope with discrimination and physical victimization simultaneously may be more effective in saving lives.
| S-EPMC4986045 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The debate regarding whether women are more empathetic than men has broad scientific, social and clinical implications. However, previous independent questionnaires and brain imaging studies that tested different samples reported inconsistent results regarding sex/gender differences in empathic ability. We conducted three studies to investigate sex/gender differences in empathic ability using large-sample questionnaires and electroencephalography (EEG) measures. We showed that the estimation of empathic ability using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index questionnaire showed higher rating scores in women than in men in all studies. However, our EEG measures of empathy, indexed by both phase-locked and non-phased-locked neural responses to others' painful (vs neutral) facial expressions, support a null hypothesis of the sex/gender difference in empathic ability. In addition, we showed evidence that priming social expectations of women and men's ability to share and care about others' feelings eliminated the sex/gender difference in questionnaire measures of empathic ability. Our large-sample EEG results challenge the notion of women's superiority in empathy that is built based on subjective questionnaire measures that are sensitive to social desirability. Our findings indicate that whether the notion of women's superiority in empathic ability reflects a biological/social difference between women and men or a gender-role stereotype remains an open question.
| S-EPMC9976760 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Previous studies on face preferences have found that online and laboratory experiments yield similar results with samples from developed countries, where the majority of the population has internet access. No study has yet explored whether the same holds true in developing countries, where the majority of the population does not have internet access. This gap in the literature has become increasingly important given that several online studies are now using cross-country comparisons. We therefore sought to determine if an online sample is representative of the population in the developing country of El Salvador. In studies of Hispanic men and women aged 18-25, we tested facial masculinity and adiposity preferences by collecting data in person as well as online. Our results showed that there were no differences in preferences between people who reported having internet access, whether they were tested online or in person. This provides evidence that testing style does not bias preferences among the same population. On the other hand, our results showed multiple differences in preferences between people who reported having internet access and people who reported not having internet access. More specifically, we found that people without internet access preferred more feminine men, more masculine women, and women with higher adiposity than people with internet access. We also found that people without internet access had fewer resources (e.g. running water) than people with internet access, suggesting that harshness in the environment may be influencing face preferences. These findings suggest that online studies may provide a distorted perspective of the populations in developing countries.
| S-EPMC4089996 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Do lifestyle preferences contribute to the remaining gender gap in higher positions in academia with highly qualified women-especially those with children-deliberately working fewer hours than men do? We tested the "mothers work less" hypothesis in two samples of early career researchers employed at universities in Germany (N = 202) and in the US (N = 197). Early career researchers in the US worked on average 6.3 hours more per week than researchers in Germany. In Germany, female early career researchers with children had drastically reduced work hours (around 8 hours per week) compared to male researchers with children and compared to female researchers without children, whereas we found no such effect for U.S. researchers. In addition, we asked how long respondents would ideally want to work (ideal work hours), and results revealed similar effects for ideal work hours. Results support the "mothers work less" hypothesis for German but not for U.S. early career researchers.
| S-EPMC6112653 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Gender differences in math performance are now small in developed countries and they cannot explain on their own the strong underrepresentation of women in math-related fields. This latter result is however no longer true once gender differences in reading performance are also taken into account. Using individual-level data on 300,000 15-y-old students in 64 countries, we show that the difference between a student performance in reading and math is 80% of a standard deviation (SD) larger for girls than boys, a magnitude considered as very large. When this difference is controlled for, the gender gap in students' intentions to pursue math-intensive studies and careers is reduced by around 75%, while gender gaps in self-concept in math, declared interest for math or attitudes toward math entirely disappear. These latter variables are also much less able to explain the gender gap in intentions to study math than is students' difference in performance between math and reading. These results are in line with choice models in which educational decisions involve intraindividual comparisons of achievement and self-beliefs in different subjects as well as cultural norms regarding gender. To directly show that intraindividual comparisons of achievement impact students' intended careers, we use differences across schools in teaching resources dedicated to math and reading as exogenous variations of students' comparative advantage for math. Results confirm that the comparative advantage in math with respect to reading at the time of making educational choices plays a key role in the process leading to women's underrepresentation in math-intensive fields.
| S-EPMC6681723 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Numerous epidemiological reports have found that adolescent, young adult, and middle-aged adult girls and women are more likely to be diagnosed with unipolar depression and report greater symptoms of depression when compared to boys and men of similar ages. What is less well-known is whether this gender difference persists into late life. This literature review examines whether the well-known gender difference in unipolar depression continues into old age, and, if it does, whether the variables that are known to contribute to the gender difference in unipolar depression from adolescence through adulthood continue to contribute to the gender difference in the elderly, and/or whether there are new variables that arise in old age and contribute to the gender difference in the elderly. In this review of 85 empirical studies from every continent except for Antarctica, we find substantial support for the gender difference in depression in individuals who are 60 and older. More research is necessary to determine which factors are the strongest predictors of the gender difference in depression in late life, and particularly whether the factors that seem to be responsible for the gender difference in depression in earlier life stages continue to predict the gender difference in the elderly, and/or whether new factors come into play in late life. Longitudinal research, meta-analyses, and model-based investigations of predictors of the gender difference in depression are needed to provide insights into how and why the gender difference in depression persists in older age.
| S-EPMC6371140 | biostudies-literature