Relative physical strength of men vs. women?

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Jeff Thomas

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I'm looking for an authoritative source regarding the relative physical strength of men and women. I've heard that a 150 pound man is X stronger than a 150 pound woman, on average. Seems I saw a table somewhere with this kind of information.

My point is that women, especially, tend to argue that they wouldn't need a gun if there weren't any guns available to criminals. Ignoring the unlikely prospect of keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, I believe these women kid themselves about their chances against a large, brutal man.

So, if you've seen such a chart / table, or have a good reference, please let me know. Thanks.

Live and let live. Regards from AZ

[This message has been edited by Jeff Thomas (edited August 07, 2000).]
 
I haven't seen a chart, but my wife's pretty strong for a woman, and it's sad to see her try to take three aimed shots offhand with a rifle. She turns her head and says "I'm tired." I'm really glad she's into Kempo, because if she didn't know how to handle herself, she'd be a real pushover, and I suspect that most women would be. When I walk in malls or whatever, I look at women and think about how easy it is to take them down...that's why I like my wife to carry, and every other woman for that matter. There's no wonder that there are as many crimes committed upon women as there are. These punks have aggression to take out, but they'll only fight a girl. They might as well be kicking a carary's *$$. Yeah, that takes a real man. Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now! :)

BTW, I don't mean to infer that I personally would want to hurt a woman...but women are plainly more fragile and weak as compared to men.

------------------
AKA "Ol' Slewfoot"
Frontsight! has changed, and when the time is right, Ol' Slewfoot will emerge.
 
IMHO it is more a matter of attitude than physical attributes ifbody mass is the same.

Men usually don't want to admit to being weaker than another guy or god forbid a woman. So they tend to push themselves harder with physical work...and the only way to get stronger is to exert yourself...so my idea is men tend to be more physically active with strength type activities.

If you hang out in gyms or fitness clubs you will notice that few women spend much time lifting weights with a power or strength approach. They tend to do areobic workouts or light wt high rep stuff if they do weights.

I have met a few women who lifted weights for strenght and they were comparable to men of same body weight in strength. Or grew up on a farm and were used to physical labor.
 
Some sources I have seen for this are US ARMY... I remember seeing this chart there.
And Muscle and Fitness magazine - which I used to read years ago.
 
Don't forget, too, that given equal body mass, etc. the woman has superior lower body strength and the man superior upper body strength. True thing!
 
My wife was comparable or stronger than my roommate when they were both around 150. But she lifts with me and does very little in the way of "toning" or "aerobic" movements. She is "strong like bull," which is why I love her.....

However, she's the exception that proves the rule. On average, women are much weaker than men. AFAIK, the "superior lower body strength" thing refers only to isolated lower body movements--not, say, squats or deadlifts, which I would consider better indicators of lower body strength. I've heard it said many times that female strength is concentrated in the lower body while male strength is concentrated in the upper, but I don't buy it. Look at any well-conditioned male athlete--his lower body will be stronger than his upper. Why would that happen if the natural balance favors the upper body? I think a woman's lower body strength is more comparable to a man's than her upper body strength, certainly, but that doesn't mean she has greater lower body strength than a man even pound for pound.

Of course, this is my uninformed caveman opinion. If I'm wrong I will apologize graciously. :D
 
Equal conditioning and I recall that women have about 70% of the male's strength
and men have a better oxygen capacity.

Could be wrong.

As far as the fighting issue, I see a lot of big guys who say they don't need a gun because they are big. I say just more to slash into steaks and chops.
 
I think a cursory glance at the physical readiness requirements for the Armed Forces will show what THEY think of this question. Women are required to achieve quite a bit less than their male counterparts.

I also don't buy the women having stronger lower body strength position. I may be wrong, but that just doesn't make sound physical sense to me.

I'm in the Navy. Have been for over a dozen years. The only thing I know is that a submersible pump doesn't change its weight to accomodate a female crew member, nor does a charged fire hose buck less when you charge it if there happens to be a woman holding it. If you're in the Navy, and you can't fight a fire on-board a ship, then you are a detriment and don't belong there. And that's REGARDLESS of your gender. I don't care how you're configured, so long as you can do the job. And just like every Marine's first and foremost duty is as an infantryman, every sailor on board a ship is a firefighter. It just has to be that way for safety.

Can you folks tell that I've dealt with this before?
 
I just love standing around the gun shop, listening to some "Death From Above"-t-shirt-wearing, Soldier of Fiction reading, .50AE Desert Eagle-owning, accountant rant about how women are ruining whatever because "they're just not as physically capable as men". Especially when this pot-bellied twink stands maybe 5'7" (although it says 6'0" on his drivers license). I'll usually step real close (to emphasize how far I have to tilt my head to look down at him) and ask if he'd care to arm wrestle. I'll admit that I'm the exception to the norm for women, but it's amazing how many guys think that their Y chromosome makes them more physically capable than FloJo or Holzclaw. I don't think physical tests should be 'dumbed down' for us women, but there's a percentage of us who are more than capable of passing the laughable physical standards they use on the guy's tests these days.

------------------
"..but never ever Fear. Fear is for the enemy. Fear and Bullets."
10mm: It's not the size of the Dawg in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog!
 
I had a discussion with a cop about this once, he was unhappy about why they have easier physical tests for women as compared to men, in law enforcement & the military.
He felt that all applicants regardless of their gender should have the same physical tests.

Women are weaker pound for pound compared to men.That's usually because they have more fat percentage than most men. But I have seen exceptions.
Men have more muscle and so, can do more strenuous work. Women on the other hand have better stamina and have a higher pain treshhold than men do(designed for child birth?).
Anand
 
Lets all remember that Men and Women are built differently.

Men are stronger than women for a reason. It all goes back to the -hunter/gatherer- days when the men would hunt, and the women would gather and rear the children. They didnt need to be strong. Of course, some will dismiss this FACT as "male pig propaganda", but face, its the truth.

Just look at the animal kingdom. You'll notice that males are bigger, stronger, more aggressive, and and usually the ones that hunt and provide protection.

Yeah, there are exceptions to a lot of things. But if we were to go at this on a case by case basis, then we'd never get anywere.

--Jeff Thomas, I'm sorry I cant help you, but I needed to chime in on this one.
 
I believe it is something like 70-80% of the upper body strength potential of a man, signifigantly more abdominal strength (Gee I wonder why), slightly more lower body strength. That being said the DOD PT test are kinda skewed, women should have the same run times and sit-up requirements as men do.
 
Don Gwinn, from all my days (a lot) at the gym I agree with you. Women are very much weaker overall. Pound for pound I have a younger brother that can rep with 405lbs on deadlift at a body weight of 165. And when you talk of upper body strenght the ratio is even more obvious. Take something like incline barbell and most women can hardly do the bar let alone another 275lbs on top of it. I remember in my younger and dumber days doing standing barbell shoulder presses with 225 pounds, but first stoping at the waist with the bar and reverse curling it up to chest in a cheat motion. Maybe a few women on earth could do this, and the fact that I did it and am not all that strong makes me seriously question the pound for pound argument.

Far as I know men also have a higher (white?) blood count. As to VO2 MAX I believe that a few years ago that the male cyclist (Indurian?) had one of the highest ever. Men also produce far higher amounts of Testosterone than women do.
As to endurance I have also seen that quoted for women if it is ultra long, If this is true why aren't there any women in the Tour de France? Are they not allowed? Or would they not be able to compete? (like the NFL)

This is not to be taken as a flame against women, they can swing a mean spatula. :)



[This message has been edited by oberkommando (edited August 08, 2000).]
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Tamara:
I'll admit that I'm the exception to the norm for women, but it's amazing how many guys think that their Y chromosome makes them more physically capable than FloJo or Holzclaw. I don't think physical tests should be 'dumbed down' for us women, but there's a percentage of us who are more than capable of passing the laughable physical standards they use on the guy's tests these days.
[/quote]

I agree that a lot of women could pass the test at the men's required levels. If the women are up to snuff physically, then I'm all for them serving on-board ship. If a man isn't, then get him out of there. It has NOTHING to do with me being sexist (although I will admit that I am to a certain extent), but it DOES have to do with safety. And that should be the paramount concern in a shipboard environment where running away just isn't an option when things go wrong.



[This message has been edited by Bob Locke (edited August 08, 2000).]
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Just look at the animal kingdom. You'll notice that males are bigger, stronger, more aggressive, and and usually the ones that hunt and provide protection.
[/quote]

It's true that male animals tend to be bigger and stronger than females, but that has more to do with mating than with hunting.

Amongst lions, for instance, the males are bigger than the females, but the females do most of the hunting. The males have evolved to be bigger and stronger because they compete with each other for the right to mate with multiple females; wimpy lions tend not to pass on their genes.

As a rule of thumb, species in which the males engage in ritual combat over "harems" of females have more sexual dimorphism than species in which males and females mate individually. Contrast, for example, elephant seals and gorillas with tigers and penguins.
 
Since men are, on average, taller and heavier than women, "pound for pound" comparisons don't capture the whole picture. Even if the sexes had equal strength per unit of size, a 5'6" woman weighing 120 pounds would still be at a serious disadvantage when facing a 6'0" man weighing 190 pounds in unarmed combat.
 
About the physical training thing, I'm testing for LE right now. As a 25 year old male I have to run a mile and a half in 12:12. Women get 15:25.

The thing that gets me about this is the fact that why should there be a difference for the mile and a half run? Women supposedly have stronger lower bodies right, and lets face it its easier to run a 120 lbs body around a track than my 270 lbs body. Oh well.

My aunt has been in LE for the last 16 years, when she passed the physical tests she passed the same ones as the men. You can't find anybody more disgusted than her about the lowered standards, she says now her backup tends to be little wimpy women, or big fat lazy guys.
 
Usually the comparrisons are not measured in lifting strength (I am 230, I can squat 460#, she is 120 and can squat 240). We both lift 2:1 but I lift more, who is more effiscient?

Women tend to be higher is red muscle cells and fat. This is due to their bearing children and those few months where they are heavy with child or nursing, they metabloize the fat or the dark meat. Women are better at detailed tasks- form gathering, it is postulated that they needed to discern colors and leaf shapes to distinguish between food and poison. Women are better at pain management- due to birthing and have better mental and when normalized to size, physical stamina.

The argument that they can be as strong is moot, we evolved (sorry Kansas) to handle different tasks in our daily survival. Each role is important, but the aggressing man will most likely over power the eggressing woman.

To counter a point raised above, not all species result in larger males. A great deal of species- some fish, most birds, all insects and SOME mammals are matriarchal with the female being larger and stronger than the male.
 
Research national and internation stats for the best performance in sports from say the 40's to today. You will notice that at least for things like running and swimming that the records keep getting broken and that a female athlete of today would beat a male athlete of the 50's and 60's. And it isn't because of "modern" drugs. The drugs have been around a long time they just have become illegal lately.

The military PT test are not very high to start with, unless your talking SEAL's or some other elite group, and they also have lower standards for older people [35 year olds have lower standards than a 25 year old]. IIRC you don't have to passs PT test very often and you get several chances to do it.

The hunting & gathering thing is BS...it is only one type of labor distribution that can occur. BTW in most hunting & gathering societies it is the gathering that provides most of the calories IIRC except where fishing is involved. And the women often do more of the manual labor [ie gathering firewood, butchering animals & preparing hides, carrying kids, water, & food, etc]. While the guy's wander around with a just a spear or bow. :D
 
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