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Clara Tanone - Q14: Are men and women really born in equal proportions?


Clara Tanone

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Hey guys,

 

I've researched this a little bit and found some conflicting data from my sources of internet browsing.

 

So, what's the general consensus among the scienceforums.net community?

 

Are female infants really born in slightly higher proportions than male infants?

 

What about in natural conditions (i.e. not taking into consideration abortion of female infants in certain countries due to a cultural preference)?

 

Thanks,

Clara Tanone

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Are female infants really born in slightly higher proportions than male infants?

 

 

No it is a random 50:50 chance. Though you know when you throw a coin it doesn't always work out even. However certain countries have a cultural preference for the sex of children born. Also in some places girls are born as boys and vice versa (really weird).

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Q14: Are men and women really born in equal proportions?

 

Are you going to stop when you get to Q20?

 

From Wikipedia:

Like most sexual species, the sex ratio in humans is approximately 1:1. The sex ratio at birth is commonly thought to be 107 boys to 100 girls,[2] although this value is subject to debate in the scientific community. The sex ratio for the entire world population is 101 males to 100 females.[3] Depending upon which definition is used, between 0.1% and 1.7% of live births are intersex.[4][5]

And why is this posted in Speculations? It is a question, not a speculation. It is about some fairly well-researched science.

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No it is a random 50:50 chance. Though you know when you throw a coin it doesn't always work out even. However certain countries have a cultural preference for the sex of children born. Also in some places girls are born as boys and vice versa (really weird).

No it is not, and a simple web search would have stopped you showing that you do not know what you are talking about.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio

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The sex ratio for the entire world population is 101 males to 100 females I rather think is because of the one child policy and families wanting male children and artificially skewing the result.

 

Then perhaps you can provide some evidence for that.

 

As it is, the facts would appear to contradict you: the natural birth rate appears produces a greater proportion of males.

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Then perhaps you can provide some evidence for that.

 

The article Mr. Cuthber provided states it https://en.wikipedia...Human_sex_ratio

 

As it is, the facts would appear to contradict you: the natural birth rate appears produces a greater proportion of males.

 

As I have said governmental policy in places such as China skewed the results in many countries towards a greater proportion of males. This is not natural. Parents artificially change this result because they want male heirs to carry on their family name.

Edited by fiveworlds
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Males tend to die younger, which evens out the initially uneven ratio. Whether the uneven birth ratio is biological or artificial I don't know since I've never seen a good biological explanation.

 

How much does the haploid human genome weigh with respect to the entire sperm? Maybe Y-carrying sperm are slightly lighter and thus faster.

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Regardless of the proximal proximate explanation, some think the ultimate explanation is that your genes will fare better in an offspring of whichever sex is in short supply. Females are less likely to reproduce under circumstances where there aren't enough males, so natural selection will select for mothers who birth more males.

Edited by MonDie
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The sex ratio for the entire world population is 101 males to 100 females I rather think is because of the one child policy and families wanting male children and artificially skewing the result.

Did you not realise that you were citing something that has nothing much to do with the question the OP asked?

Again, this makes it look like you don't know what you are talking about.

 

The article Mr. Cuthber provided states it https://en.wikipedia...Human_sex_ratio

 

Did you actually read the page?

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I don't know about humans but there are many species of animal that have fairly skewed sex ratios. For example some crocodiles can have as large a ratio as 10 female eggs to one male. People think this helps them grow their population, if you want to create a large population you don't really need a whole lot of males, one male can fertilize many females.

 

I think it could be difficult to figure out what the "natural" sex ratio of humans is, absent of any cultural or political influence. There are of course all kinds of interesting books and documentaries on sexual inequality in modern times and throughout history.

 

I highly recommend "The Sexual Paradox", by Susan Pinkerton She is a developmental psychologist who studies how people acquire / express gender and how different genders are viewed / treated in society.

 

Also reading about the "Weregilds". Its been so long since I read about that but there has been some interesting work done regarding it. The Weregilds were a set of laws in early germanic peoples culture that basically layed out different fines for doing things like stealing stuff, murdering someone etc. What is interesting about it is that there is a lot of different sources from different time periods regarding what Weregilds were, so you can see these laws change over time. Also there were different fines assigned to the murder / or capture of different people, like the fine was not the same for you if you killed someones son as opposed to their daughter. There is no politically correct way to say this but you can basically see the "value" of men and women within their society change throughout history, inferred as a result of different changes and outside influences, for example the onset of industrialization made the fines for women drop dramatically. You can also see a reversal in how dowries worked at about the same time.

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