Women in the Longevity Revolution

Abstract

Women’s power is basic to the longevity revolution in more ways than the obvious fact that the great majority of people over 60 in the next few decades will be women. Women are outliving men by nearly eight years both in the United States and in most post-industrial societies. And, as women stop dying in childbirth and get control of their own reproductive process, this will also occur in the developing countries. Nobody is paying much attention to this. If I were a man, the question I would ask is why millions of dollars aren’t being spent on research to find out why women are living longer than men. Whenever I have lectured on this to a mixed audience, it makes men very uneasy. I don’t know why. Maybe they don’t want to admit that women are living longer, that there could be a real superiority there. But we might say: If only men could be more like women, they might live longer!