I also think that the strength gap is at least partially manufactured women would in fact be stronger overall if little girls were encouraged to do physically taxing games and activities and eat their fill while they’re growing vs having to constantly diet and be sedentary indoors (or god forbid do intense cardio while under-eating). The amount of adult women honestly afraid to lift weights bc they think they’ll get bulky as though bulking isn’t a full time job that athletes have to spend all their time on and anyone on earth gets shredded from just using their adult muscles for their intended purpose, girl your bone density 🥀
ECON STUDENT NERD INFORMATION:
One of the key indicators of economic improvement/growth is antrhopometrics specifically related to height, since height is linked to the early childhood/pubescent disease and nutrition environment. Basically, if you don't have enough food or suffer constant disease/illness, you will not grow as tall as someone who had those things.
Why does this relate? Because since 1900 women have seen less than half the increase in height and weight that men have on average. Another important fact: 1 in 4 women in 1905 was taller than the average man born in 1905, but this dropped to 1 in 8 born for those born in 1958.
We can infer given the evolution of women's beauty standards over the same time period (along with real data that shows female children are, on average, breast fed for less time than male ones), that this is at least in part due to the fact that women are encouraged to under-eat and under-exercise to remain short, thin, and and delicate, while men's beauty standards centre more around strength and height development.
We have no real idea what the strength and height gaps truly are between men and women because women are actively encouraged to avoid eating and exercising sufficiently to reach their full potential. It could be an entirely manufactured gap for all we know, but the average is so skewed and changed by society that we can't really gain anything from the data we have.
