The Inequality in Numbers

Records show that male and female births are almost equal in number. But a study of mortality shows that the rate is higher for men than for women. This disparity is in evidence from early childhood to extreme old age. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica: “In general, the risk of death at any given age is less for females than for males.”

The proportionately higher numbers of women in society can be traced to a variety of causes. For instance, when war breaks out, the majority of the casualties are men. In the First World War (1914-18) about 8 million soldiers were killed. Most of the civilians killed were also men. In the Second World War (1939-45) about 60 million people were either killed or maimed for life, most of them men. In the Iraq-Iran war alone (1979-1988), 82,000 Iranian women and about 100,000 Iraqi women were widowed. All in the space of ten years.

Another drain on the availability of men in society is imprisonment. In the U.S., the most civilized society of modem times, no less than 1,300,000 people are convicted daily for one crime or another. A number of them-97% of whom are men-are obliged to serve lengthy prison sentences.

The modern industrial system too is responsible for the lower proportion of men in society, death by accident having become a matter of daily routine in present times. There is no country in which accidents do not take place every day on the streets, in the factories and wherever sophisticated, heavy machinery is handled by human beings. In this modem industrial age, such accidents are so much on the increase that a whole new discipline has come into being-safety engineering. According to data collected in 1967, in that year a total of 175,000 people died as the result of accidents in fifty different countries. Most of these were men.

In spite of safety engineering, casualties from industrial accidents have increased. For instance, the number of air accidents in 1988 was higher than ever before. Similarly, experimentation in arsenals continues to kill people in all industrialized countries, but the death toll is never made public. Here again, it is men who have the highest casualty rate.

For reasons of this nature, women continue to outnumber men. This difference persists in even the most developed societies, e.g. in America. According to data collected in 1967, there were nearly 7,100,000 more women than men. This means that even if every single man in America got married, 7,100,000 women would be left without husbands.

We give below the data of several western countries to show the ratio of men to women.

          Country                        Male                    Female     

           Austria                         47.7%                  52.93%     

           Bunna                          48.81                   51.19

           Gennany                     48.02                   51.89

           France                         48.99                   51.01

           Italy                              48.89                   51.01

           Poland                         48.61                   51.30

           Spain                           48.94                   51.06

           Switzerland                 48.67                   51.33

           Soviet Union               46.59                   53.03

           United States              48.58                   51.42