1- combat deaths exclude women because women in most countries are not allowed to be in combat. therefore most women who die during war are counted as civilian deaths. Women are also more likely to die after a conflict is officially over than during the conflict itself. Please also note that combat deaths comprise 2-29% of total deaths related to wartime (see table 2). Therefore, 71-98% of all wartime deaths happen after the conflict is officially over, typically caused by things like infectious diseases and traffic accidents due to the damage to infrastructure that inevitably follows a war. These deaths are primarily seen in women and children. From the same reference as above:
Effect of Armed Conflict on Life Expectancy - Plümper and Neumayer 2006 In this study, armed conflict was demonstrated to have a statistically significant and adverse effect on women as measured by the decline in the ratio of female to male life expectancy (Plümper and Neumayer 2006). Normally women live longer than men in almost all societies, so a decrease in the gender gap is interpreted as suggesting that the direct and indirect consequences of conflict combined either kill more women or that the killed women are younger on average than the men killed. The authors therefore concluded that wars negatively affected women more than men when taking into account the entire conflict cycle.
So the takeaway is that yes, more men than women die in combat, but this is because in the vast majority of combat zones, even in recent history, women were specifically barred from being considered active combat, making them more likely to be counted among civilian casualties than military casualties. (Civilian casualties comprise approximately 90% of all war time deaths.)
Therefore the graph should look more like this (assuming the highest ratio of military:civilian ratio and extrapolating it onto every single conflict ever AND accepting the numbers given above as accurate):
(please note that the gray above would be mostly female in most conflicts)
2- custody is not contested in a majority of all cases (link to another tumblr post enumerating the stats) Men who seek custody are more likely to receive it and abusive fathers are the most likely to seek custody. From source #2 in this bullet point:
Fathers who actively seek custody obtain either primary or joint physical custody over 70% of the time.
Therefore the graph would look more like this:
3- Child abusers are numerically more likely to be female, but when you consider that 90% of the time, child caregivers are female and only 10% of the time child caregivers are male, the likelihood of an individual female or male to abuse children is tipped in the favor of men: see here for a breakdown of the probabilities. It is p=0.77 for men and p=0.23 for women, making men nearly four times as likely to abuse children they have access to than women. Here is the graph:
4- Homicide: Homicides are also most likely to be perpetrated by men. Men commit approximately 88.7% of US homicides. So let’s make it fair:
5- Homelessness: single men are more likely than single women to become homeless. That’s where that statistic comes from. However, the stat ignores that 34% of the homeless are families, and that 84% of those families are female-headed. Homeless women are far more likely to be responsible for the care of a child under the age of 18 than homeless men (US stats only)
Women and families are also the fastest growing segment of the homeless population.
6- Suicides. Women attempt suicide more often than men and have higher rates of mental illness. Suicide by definition is self-inflicted harm. To blame women for the actions of men (as many of these graphs actually do) is dishonest.
7- College graduates: Until the mid-20th century most higher education was barred to women. The fact that men earned more college degrees was framed as a justification for how much more intelligent men were than women. Now, of course, that women have more of a chance to earn the same degrees, it is being painted as female privilege. Interesting how it wasn’t male privilege that keeps faculty overwhelmingly white and male. In fact let’s take a look at that:
Bonus: breakdown of faculty by race from the same source
The Alaskan Native and Native American representation in higher learning is so low that it rounds to zero percent. In all my years of lab work, research, symposia, and interviews, I have only met one phd holder in my life who was a Native American.
To get back to the matter at hand, however, it’s interesting how those privileged women are still primarily learning from male faculty. Also interesting is to see how many professors have successfully climbed the tenure track to reach full professor (It is in the link above; I am simply showing the breakdown of all collegiate instructors.)
8- Work place deaths. The professions with the highest workplace death incidence are also the professions where women are either officially or unofficially barred from entry. Logging, working on the oil fields, even being a female truck driver can leave women vulnerable to attack at truck stops from other truck drivers or stopping motorists. However, I will concede that more men die in the workplace than women, so long as those workplaces are legal and aboveboard.
Women still make up the vast majority of trafficking victims, sweatshop workers, and prostitutes in the world. All of those professions, were they cataloged, would certainly rival some of the deadliest US professions.
Bonus, for TS: Forcible rape is perpetrated by men 99.1% of the time and by women 0.9% of the time.
