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I've always thought that "women are weaker1 than men in general" was a biological fact (supposedly stemming/evolving from the social structure of prehistoric humans)

Is there any reputable research done which demonstrates (or disproves) that the average woman has the same strength as the average man?

1 In this post, "weaker" means "physically weaker", and refers only to cis women (not transgender women)

dont_shog_me_bro
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    Note that nearly every woman has a stronger myometrium (muscle layer of the uterus) than nearly any man has. Admittedly, video games in which a character prevails by using the myometrium are, um, rare. – minopret Mar 17 '13 at 15:13
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    "Physical strength" is highly task specific, and comes in distinct flavors such as maximum single exertion, maximum sustained power, maximum endurance and so on. Would finding that one gender has the advantage at (either the middle of the bell curve or the extreme right end) in a *majority* of task satisfy that the claim is true or would finding a single example where women are "stronger" satisfy that the claim is false. – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Dec 18 '13 at 15:37
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    @dmckee I'm looking for averages; how the center of the bell curve fares. Though the behavior at the extremes would be interesting too. – Manishearth Dec 18 '13 at 15:40
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    Do you want to control for height, weight, and/or other measures of physical size, in case women are on average smaller? – ChrisW Dec 18 '13 at 17:27
  • See also: http://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/3163/is-there-a-biological-reason-for-women-to-be-weaker-then-men-in-the-same-weight – Shog9 Dec 19 '13 at 16:50
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    So, should we argue against separate men's and women's races in the Olympics? – GEdgar Aug 27 '15 at 21:44
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    I think if you look at the effects of hormone replacement therapy in both types of transgender people (FtM and MtF), it becomes pretty clear that muscle mass and overall strength changes a lot by just changing hormonal balance to those of the target biological sex. This effect wouldn't happen if this strength gap was merely cultural. – T. Sar Jul 05 '17 at 11:27
  • https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/posts/5637/revisions – mob Jul 07 '17 at 16:48
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    You told about the averaged which can be tricky to show the data. Also opponents can always tell that the average woman does not want/need to be strong. Instead of this you can look at the best. For example in pro sports everyone wants and tries to be the best. Take a look at **powerlifting records** at various weight categories. Also look at **[marathon runners](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_marathoners), fast runners, swimmers, cyclers** and any other sport which requires strength/endurance. – Salvador Dali Jul 08 '17 at 09:56
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    The original source of this claim is criticizing the notion that **"_women, as a group, need to be sheltered, protected, and taken care of by men_"**. The term "_weaker_" used in the next sentence seems to be a reference back to that idea, attempting to refer to it in a single word. So, the original source really doesn't appear to be talking about physical strength. Seems like the question's worth keeping as-is as it's already got a few answers, though it seems unreasonable to interpret the claim as having been made by the cited source. – Nat Sep 07 '17 at 01:20
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    I wonder if another source for the claim about physical strength might be found? I mean it seems like the existing reference should be deleted as it's a false attribution, and having no reference would seem to be superior to having a fake reference. – Nat Sep 07 '17 at 01:25
  • You should make it clear in the question that the context of the video is "escaping capture". If being physically strong, as all of the irrelevant answers here have misinterpreted it, was very beneficial to escaping capture they wouldn't let prisoners work out in prison. – dont_shog_me_bro Sep 11 '17 at 14:28
  • @dont_shog_me_bro: Regarding the edit: The claim appears to be about biological women, not people who gender-identify as women. For example, transgender people who identify as male qualify as women if they're biologically female. – Nat Jul 03 '20 at 12:25
  • @Nat that just illustrates how silly this quotation is. A woman who takes testosterone can be every bit as strong as a man but misogynists don't like that answer. – dont_shog_me_bro Jul 04 '20 at 12:41
  • @dont_shog_me_bro: Aren't there some people who gender-identify as male without taking testosterone? With regards to the claim, it seems to be about biological-sexed females as opposed to gender-identifying females; it'd probably be easier to keep it focused. That said, I'd have to admit that I'm curious about your point how strong females who take testosterone are compared to biological males.. I guess that might depend on the dosage? – Nat Jul 04 '20 at 18:48

3 Answers3

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What do we mean by weaker, or by stronger?

"Women really are stronger than men, according to study"

Is the title of a BBC article which says

A recent academic study has shown that under extreme conditions such as famines, epidemics and enslavement, women are able to survive for longer than men.

Across modern populations, women outlive men in almost all instances

The study says this

Abstract

Women in almost all modern populations live longer than men. Research to date provides evidence for both biological and social factors influencing this gender gap. Conditions when both men and women experience extremely high levels of mortality risk are unexplored sources of information. We investigate the survival of both sexes in seven populations under extreme conditions from famines, epidemics, and slavery. Women survived better than men: In all populations, they had lower mortality across almost all ages, and, with the exception of one slave population, they lived longer on average than men. Gender differences in infant mortality contributed the most to the gender gap in life expectancy, indicating that newborn girls were able to survive extreme mortality hazards better than newborn boys. Our results confirm the ubiquity of a female survival advantage even when mortality is extraordinarily high. The hypothesis that the survival advantage of women has fundamental biological underpinnings is supported by the fact that under very harsh conditions females survive better than males even at infant ages when behavioral and social differences may be minimal or favor males. Our findings also indicate that the female advantage differs across environments and is modulated by social factors.

Now this type of strength might not be what the question refers to. Perhaps some people might prefer to label this attribute as (biological) toughness rather than strength?

At the very least, we should be aware that when one person says group A is stronger than group B or another person disputes that statement, we should consider carefully what type of strength is being referred to.

Types of Strength/Weakness

The question quotes a video as saying

The belief that women are somehow a naturally weaker gender ...

but it may be that the author of the video is, perhaps in part, perhaps mostly, referring to other kinds of historically perceived weakness: emotional and intellectual.

This answer doesn't address that but we probably shouldn't assume the author was only referring to muscle size and not to strengths like toughness, determination, perseverance and so on.

We can put the above concerns to one side and consider muscular strength.

Sexual dimorphism in primates

Age and gender comparisons of muscle strength in 654 women and men aged 20–93 yr in the Journal of Applied Physiology contains this graph

Regression analysis of age and gender-related differences
Fig. 1. Regression analysis of age- and gender-related differences in concentric (Con; A) and eccentric (Ecc; B) peak torque of knee extensors at slow (0.52 rad/s) velocity. Both Con and Ecc peak torque declined significantly (all P < 0.001) for men (r 2 = 0.30 for Con and 0.19 for Ecc) and women (r 2 = 0.28 for Con and 0.11 for Ecc).

We can see that many women are stronger than many men (i.e. there is considerable overlap in the data) but that the average strength for women is lower.

Sexual dimorphism in Humans is relatively small according to anthropologist Clark Spencer Larsen of Ohio State University writing in PNAS

Humans today display relatively limited sexual dimorphism (≈15%), whereas some of the other hominoids (gorillas and orangutans) are highly dimorphic (>50%)

Causation

According to Kirchengast S.

Although sexual size dimorphism has a clear evolutionary basis and is caused by genetic and hormonal factors, socio-cultural factors such as gender role in society and gender typical workload influence the degree of sexual size dimorphism too.

So some of the differences we perceive may be the result of cultural forces of the sort which change over time and from place to place.

When is using averages (mean or median) useful and when inappropriate

The question asks about the strength of the average woman vs the average male but in most situations (e.g. interviewing job candidates) we are not interacting with the average person we are more likely interacting with a person whose physical characteristics may be anywhere on the spectrum above. If you select two people at random, one male, one female, there is a significant probability (less than .5 but far higher than 0) that the female is stronger than the male. Focussing on small differences in overall averages for a large population is inappropriate for most situations which involve only a few individuals.

It would be bizarre to say to a candidate, you are strong enough to do this job but you are ineligible because you are a member of a group whose average strength is lower than the average of some other group. However this is exactly the sort of discrimination that has occurred in the past and that is part of the context for the video which stimulated the question above.

We should note that the quotation in the question doesn't use the word "average".

Social implications

It may be that the video referenced in the question is concerned whether this perception (true or not) contributes to an unreasonable bias against one part of our population.

The better question may be what do we do with this information. David Haye may be stronger than Stephen Hawking. Should we skew society to benefit people with large muscles at the expense of the others?

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RedGrittyBrick
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    Good point about "cultural forces". – Manishearth Mar 17 '13 at 12:17
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    Skeletal muscle mass is on average significantly greater in men whether upper-body, lower-body, or total, but the difference for the upper body is significantly greater than the difference for the lower body. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10904038 I wondered why all the female archer characters and realized that archery keeps them out of arm's reach. – minopret Mar 17 '13 at 15:24
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    Cultural bias might be the cause when the average houswife is weaker than the average man due to "physical strength being dicouraged" but it's not a factor in sports, especially at the best of the best (world champions, record holders, etc.) where men have a clear advantage. – vsz Mar 18 '13 at 07:15
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    This answer crucially does **not** answer the question, namely whether the cause of this difference is cultural rather than natural. – Konrad Rudolph Mar 18 '13 at 10:54
  • Have you considered that certain muscles could be stronger in woman? like the thigh muscle. This research seems to be limited to one muscle group. – Xitcod13 Mar 20 '13 at 00:04
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    Konrad, OP didn't ask that question. – Publius Mar 20 '13 at 06:58
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    @Avi: Yeah, I didn't. I know that that's a much harder question to answer (not even sure if it's possible with the current level of research on the topic) – Manishearth Mar 21 '13 at 04:31
  • Another picture for your collection, re. women being discouraged (e.g. from joining the infantry) and/or re. "bulging muscles look mannish": http://www.businessinsider.com/photo-woman-marine-infantry-course-2013-10 – ChrisW Dec 18 '13 at 12:43
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    The second portion of your answer doesn't seem relevant to the question, and is mostly unreferenced speculative and apologetic opinion. The question is about averages, not potential and can trivially be answered empirically by your first portion. – Kit Sunde Dec 19 '13 at 07:34
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    I thought whoever wrote this answer was taking crazy pills, then I found that some pretty high up people do not think that higher testosterone levels improves athletic ability. Quick call Jeff Novitzky! They have got it all wrong http://www.tas-cas.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Media_Release_3759_July_2017.pdf – daniel Aug 08 '17 at 11:25
  • _"We can see that many women are stronger than many men"_ - Great point and exactly on spot! Also the _"should we skew society to benefit people with large muscles at the expense of the others?"_ (although completely irrelevant to the question) is a great way to promote all the virtues of feminism. On behalf of all womens, thank you :) – Maria check profile Sep 05 '17 at 08:19
  • @MariaBl. "should we skew society to benefit lions with large manes at the expense of the others?" – daniel Sep 06 '17 at 11:27
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    @MariaBl. - but we can also see that many men are stronger than ***any*** women. This question isn't about if every single male is stronger than all women, it's about whether there are innate gender physical traits that translate into greater strength for males, overall, and in a significant way. We understand the physiology and the biology at work. We understand what stimulates, in the body, the mechanisms that affect the factors that translate into raw force and explosiveness, so we do understand about biology vs culture. None of that makes any judgment about the value of it, though. – PoloHoleSet Sep 06 '17 at 13:56
  • @daniel I don't understand, english is not my mother language. What do you mean by that? – Maria check profile Sep 06 '17 at 15:57
  • @Nat: It's surprising how a 4 year old answer suddenly gains such attention. I'm happy to revisit it. – RedGrittyBrick Sep 07 '17 at 11:49
  • @RedGrittyBrick Nice update! Yeah, it's interesting for an old question like this to get fresh attention; I'm guessing that it's related to recent social debates about the causation behind observed gender differences. – Nat Sep 09 '17 at 05:18
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    Re update, note that the only part of the BBC quote that uses 'stronger' is the clickbait. The reason for this is no-one believes survival is the meaning of the use of the word 'stronger'; note that women outliving men in general has been known for a very, very long time. –  Feb 13 '18 at 12:32
  • As an addendum, while men may not be not be smarter on a global scale. They are overrepresented in the geniuses and the morons classes. Variance is far greater within males than within females. We are also physically stronger, but women are far greater than us at manipulating men. As a side note, even if the average female is far more cunning than it's male counterpart, the best manipulators are also males. Males have incentives to excel, women to attract these men. Both genders are meant to work complementary not being opponents. – xrorox Feb 16 '18 at 09:02
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    "*It would be bizarre to say to a candidate, you are strong enough to do this job but you are ineligible because you are a member of a group whose average strength is lower than the average of some other group."* Not when you are of of 100, and many physical changes to buildings, ships, etc must be made to accommodate you and your few sisters. – RonJohn Jun 02 '19 at 17:34
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    "We can see that **many women are stronger than many men** [...] but that the average strength for women is lower." It's interesting that the author feels the need, first, to look for unusual interpretations of "strength" (chance of surviving a famine = strength?) in which women are stronger, and then, when physical strength is finally addressed, to put the first part of this sentence in bold, even though the question is specifically about "average" strength. That this is the most popular answer says a lot about our society. – Qwertie Jul 07 '20 at 16:35
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Here is one clue. Visit the IAAF's page of athletic records and compare the men's and women's, category by category.

reirab
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    The claim in the Q is much more general. It is often a mistake to argue that what holds true for a very small specialised group also holds for a very much larger general group. – RedGrittyBrick Mar 18 '13 at 09:58
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    The generations of teenage boys around the world who have run miles faster than 4:12 hardly constitute a small, specialized group. Also the women who have *not* done this is large: it consists of all women. – Kaz Mar 20 '13 at 16:48
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    "all women"? best times of all 3,486,869,216 of them?- references? Exactly how many men have **not** run faster than 4:12? – RedGrittyBrick Mar 21 '13 at 09:42
  • This point is completely unreferenced: "High school boys regularly match or surpass women's records!" Plus, unless you're talking about the *average* high school boy, age does not come into it -- there are always small groups of highly athletic individuals, no matter what the age. It's not surprising at all that a small group of 16 to 18 year olds could have athletic prowess -- in the same way it wouldn't be surprising that a group of 20 to 25 year old had it. (They don't reflect the average.) – Django Reinhardt Dec 18 '13 at 15:36
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    @DjangoReinhardt The point is that unremarkable male athletes not yet in their physical prime beat **world** records made by remarkable, rare women. – Kaz Dec 18 '13 at 16:09
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    @Kaz I get your point, I just don't see any source that backs it up. – Django Reinhardt Dec 18 '13 at 18:15
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    In general, while it raises some problems of its own (applying the specific to the general). That is a problem with all statistics. And I would argue this is in fact the best way to go about answering this question. When answering the question cultural or genetic, it is important to control for "drive". Women in general being told not to train at running fast, lifting huge amounts, etc. So we pick two groups of people with the exact same culture and drive, male and female professional athletes (people with the same drive to be the best, lift the most, run the fastest, train the most). – Jonathon Aug 01 '14 at 17:11
  • The OP uses the word "weaker" ... maybe compare men's weightlifting to women's ... https://www.olympic.org/weightlifting – GEdgar Jul 05 '17 at 13:33
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    Ability to run a certain distance in a certain time is a very narrow, strange definition of "weak". –  Jul 05 '17 at 13:42
  • Also, comparing weightlifting records is pointless, because they are the extremes of each gender and not anything like the average or majority of humans. –  Jul 05 '17 at 13:43
  • I almost upvoted this, as the approach to providing evidence seems right. However, I don't like thta you cited running speed as your final proof, as speed and strength are not directly linked. Had you instead used athletic competitions of strength, such as weight lifting, as your basis this would be a better example. – dsollen Jul 05 '17 at 16:43
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    What he posted is just an example, but I believe that if you look at sports results in general, you will get a similar outcome for most disciplines, even for team sports. – clabacchio Jul 06 '17 at 13:06
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    @ゼーロ The idea here isn't to compare records, but rather that unremarkable men top women's records. Even though those men aren't average, that has a point. – Kaz Jul 06 '17 at 20:55
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    @ゼーロ You cannot entirely separate strength from speed. A fast mile doesn't require weight-lifting one-rep-max type strength, but my answer also covers 100 m sprints. A fast 100 m sprint requires whole-body strength. The top contenders in this event are well-muscled males. – Kaz Jul 08 '17 at 16:49
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    @RedGrittyBrick The source for 4:12 being the world record for all women for a mile run is in the first link in this answer. The International Association of Athletics Federations should be a reasonably reputable source. The wiki page for running records also shows that number. The [wiki page for high school records](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_high_school_national_records_in_track_and_field) shows that the high school men's record is indeed well below that (3:53.) – reirab Feb 10 '18 at 01:14
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    @RedGrittyBrick According to [this article](https://www.runnersworld.com/high-school/four-reasons-why-more-high-schoolers-are-running-sub-400) 4 American high school students had run a mile in under 4 minutes within a year of each other in 2015 and 2016. That seems to back up 4:12 being 'regularly' beaten pretty well. – reirab Feb 10 '18 at 01:18
  • The problem with this line of argument is that the same evidence can be used to conclude that humans are getting stronger over time, since world records are beaten, and the 4-minute mile was once considered a remarkable achievement for any human runner. It's fairly obvious there are other factors at play on the time dimension - better training, better equipment, etc; it's hard to rule out that those are also a factor on the gender dimension, with women's sports often receiving less attention, and therefore less funding. – IMSoP May 01 '22 at 09:31
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Grip Strength

When testing grip strength, a median young adult man is stronger than about 98%+ of young adult women. Even the top fraction of female athletes as a population are only slightly stronger than median young men.

Hand-grip strength of young men, women and highly trained female athletes, Eur J Appl Physiol (2007) 99:415–421, DOI: 10.1007/s00421-006-0351-1

grip strength data

Muscle Mass

Men also have much greater average total muscle mass.

Men had significantly (P < 0.001) more SM in comparison to women in both absolute terms (33.0 vs. 21.0 kg) and relative to body mass (38.4 vs. 30.6%). The gender differences were greater in the upper (40%) than lower (33%) body (P < 0.01).

total muscle

Jump Distance

long jump

Oddthinking
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    This is for one very narrow definition of "weaker", and it appears that she didn't mean it that way when she made the statement. In the context of the video, how is grip strength important to the argument being made? –  Sep 04 '17 at 12:16
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    Are you claiming she doesn't mean physically weaker, as in having less muscle mass and/or having weaker muscles? Grip strength is easily measured and easily compared and is hard to argue with much like other simple measures like height. – Murphy Sep 04 '17 at 12:22
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    I'm saying that grid strength is a very specific measurement and this isn't Top Trumps. –  Sep 04 '17 at 13:57
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    @ゼーロ Added total muscle mass. It's not top trumps but it's an example that correlates quite well with many other things. – Murphy Sep 04 '17 at 14:32
  • Thanks for improving your answer. Unfortunately it still doesn't really address the issue, which is selecting a definition of weakness that favours men. Perhaps you could add some reasoning as to why this definition is relevant to the video and the statement in question. –  Sep 04 '17 at 15:23
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    @ゼーロ The qestion is about physical strength/weakness. I'm merely using the dictionary definition. "the physical energy that someone has to lift or move things", You kinda have to bend over backwards to find inventive definitions such that the group with more muscle and stronger muscle don't count as having more physical strength. – Murphy Sep 04 '17 at 18:07
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    @ゼーロ - Don't think that's a fair criticism on your part. You clearly take issue with the method of assessing "strength." To go by the video is not fair, because OP clearly states that the video only spurred the related posted question.They mean, specifically "physical strength" (see the end-note). Instead of saying "nope, not good enough," over and over, why aren't you offering the type of measurement that would be more relevant and accurate as a measurement of physical strength? You seem to feel there is an objective, universally accepted, non-arbitrary way to measure. Tell us what it is. – PoloHoleSet Sep 06 '17 at 18:59