Why do women live longer than men? • FRANCE 24 English

[Music] Hello, I’m Annette Young and welcome to the 51enter, a show about women reshaping our world. Coming up, the focus may be on the new leader of the Catholic Church, but what about the women who make up half of the church? Nuns are now calling for greater inclusion as well as much needed recognition of sexual abuse. Also, why do women live that much longer than men? And why do doctors and researchers consistently fail to understand the inequality between the sexes when it comes to the aging process? I’ll be talking shortly to Dr. Zaher Medi, a longevity scientist. And tackling stereotypes. With the Women’s Rugby World Cup around the corner, interest in the game is on the rise, especially among young women in the UK and also here in France. But first, as the world celebrated the election of a new pope, women who make up half of the 1.4 billion strong Catholic Church around the globe were largely absent from the ceremony. But with the election of the first American pontiff, Pope Leo, there’s hope he will go further than his predecessor, who had at least boosted the female workforce in the Vatican. nuns are now calling for more inclusion as well as recognition of the rising cases of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. As Jennifer Benra reports, tears of joy for these nuns in Vatican City as a new pope is elected. The first American pontiff, Pope Leo the 14th. Let it shine. Earlier, pink smoke was seen rising over Rome, not to signal a new pope, but rather a call to action. Smoke out sexism. These members of a woman’s ordination conference, an organization fighting for women to be ordained as deacons, priests, and bishops are denouncing the Catholic Church’s allmale conclave. We are saying to the cardinals, you cannot keep ignoring 50% of the Catholic population. You cannot go into a locked room and discuss the future of the church without half of the church. Throughout his 12-year papacy, France has made strides in boosting the number of women in the Vatican. [Music] In 2023, he gave women a right to vote during sinods, the Vatican summits involving the world’s bishops. Although Catholic women still aren’t able to be ordained, they hope this could change under Pope Leo. From the next pope, I think he would I would like that carries on the uh maybe the key things that this late pope has been founding on especially promoting women religious in some leadership uh positions like he has done that has given us hope for women in the church. Inheriting another challenge, Pope Francis acknowledged that the Catholic Church still had a long way to go when it came to abuse. In 2019, he became the first pontiff to publicly admit that priests had sexually abused nuns. The mistreatment of women is a problem. Women are treated as secondclass citizens. He was however slow in dealing with a case against Jesuit priest Marco Ivan Rupnik accused by nuns of sexual and psychological violence against them in the 1990s. It was only under pressure that Francis lifted the statute of limitations in 2023 to open proceedings against him. Whether his successor Pope Leo the 14th can bring more transparency remains to be seen as is a future role for women in the church. Now in a society which values youth counteracting aging has become a global obsession. Just think of the American entrepreneur Brian Johnson whose attempts to extend his life has made headlines. This despite the reality that the world’s population is growing older with women outliving men by at least 5 years. Yet aging is not a great leveler as we like to think it is. It too is marked by gender discrimination according to my guest today Dr. Sahe Medi a longevity scientist from New Delhi in India. Sah thank you so much for your time. just take us through why women do tend to live longer and also there is new research that has revealed a second X chromosome that may awaken with age in older women’s brains which also could help slow cognitive decline and might be a reason for why they do indeed live longer. Um aging is not a leveler as we would think. Uh actually women do live longer than men and I think it’s an evolutionary strategy. Women are built to last because they are caretakers. They are nurturers and they’re also the backbones of community. Um, and at cellular level, think of men as sports cars who are built for high energy, high power performance. Whereas women are like hybrid engines that are built for more energy efficient resilience and are designed for endurance. At the cellular level, uh women have far more efficient uh powerhouses of the cell which are also known as mitochondria. Um and um we also have a good very good repair mechanisms. Our tenome which are the ends of our chromosomes h are longer than men. Um also um the extra chromosome in women gets activated much later in their life uh during their menopause which helps them in neural repair as compared to men in their 50s. Uh they start to lose their Yrobosome and this has been a fundamental change and shift in the understanding of biology of aging among men and women. But when it comes to women living longer, Zahe, it does come at a cost, doesn’t it? I mean, because women are generally more physically frail than men in old age, they’re also more vulnerable, particularly after menopause, to developing cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s, not to mention, of course, osteoporosis. Absolutely. Yeah. And and and the data suggests um while we live longer, those 10 to 20 years that we live longer are spend in poor health, disability and caring for others uh and often in loneliness as well. And this is very much uh driven by the fact that women suffer from diseases are more prone to diseases like osteoarthritis, autoimmune diseases and also depression uh because of the loneliness. uh and uh a lot of that has to do uh with the fact that while they are you know they have this good biology they are living in the systems and societies that are not built to support women’s body I think that is what we see that while women live uh longer they have to pay the cost of it so the quality isn’t great with all these tech bros obsessing about living longer and doing whatever they can such as Brian Johnson taking blood plasma from his teenage son and and downing 100 pills every day. They do seem to forget about the lottery of genetics and also that being a man immediately means that they are at a disadvantage. Absolutely. Uh and um while I kind of uh have to say I’m intrigued by what Brian Johnson is doing uh it’s an experiment of N of one. We have to remember uh what he’s doing for his body. the bio optimization experiments uh can work beautifully and he may live up to 200 years. Uh but we have to remember that not everybody wants to live that long or or have that sort of um you know money or have no social life. So we are a very social being a and um longevity is not a solo engineering project. Um we have to understand uh while what he’s doing can give scientists good hypothesis for working at a larger scale uh longevity is simple. We need to provide people with simpler solutions that they can follow that are affordable and accessible and are purpose-driven as well not uh experiments that are designed for millionaires uh and designed um for an antisocial uh sort of a life. And what can we do as women? As women uh we definitely need to take more care of ourselves. So before caring for others just like you know in the flight they say please u uh cover your mouth before helping others you need to take care of yourselves uh before you start being carer and nurturers. and uh especially when you are hitting that uh double digit uh 40s uh and 50s the dreaded menopausal uh stage because that’s the time when you hit the decline and you need to take care of both your mental and physical health. Sah it’s been great speaking to you. Thank you so much. Thank you Annard. Now, as England prepares to host the Women’s Rugby World Cup in late August, interest in the game is on the rise, especially among young women in the UK and also here in France. Southwestern France is traditionally rugby country and one club theirs now says almost a quarter of its members are women despite a few misgivings from the community in the past. Olivia Salazar Winspear tells us more. Players from the small club of Gradinong get together for rugby practice twice a week. There’s a bit of rough and tumble, but it’s all part of the game. I got tak and a bit of a scrape. But you’re still smiling. Yes, always. Always. Some members started playing rugby at just seven years old. Here, after a few years off the pitch, this new mom’s discovering that the club’s now got a lot more women. I started up again because I saw the World Cup and I thought, “Come on, I’ve had two children and I wanted to get back into it.” And I can see that women’s rugby is taking off. Of 500 members, the club now counts 120 women. 10 years ago, there weren’t even enough female players to make up the senior team. The first year, we were four women. The second year, we managed to get to seven. So, that’s a real victory. I’ve got lots of girlfriends who came along because we were friends from school because I talked about it and they saw how happy it made me. The clubs even recruited a coach for the women to raise their level of play. Technically, they’re not as strong as the boys who started rugby at a younger age, but in terms of their state of mind, in my opinion, they’re stronger than most of the boys. The Gardinong girls are currently top of their league, having built up a formidable reputation thanks to their determination and fair play spirit, whatever the weather. And finally, a movie about factory worker Ly Lebet’s remarkable fight which led to equal pay for American women opens this weekend in the US. Le better worked at Alabama’s Goodyear plant for more than 20 years only to discover that she earned half of what the men were actually being paid. Her struggle leading to the Fair Pay Act becoming law in 2009 under President Barack Obama. We’re going to leave you with images of the film. So until our next show, bye for now. The partners and I would like to take this to the Supreme Court. That company took advantage of me like so many companies are taking advantage of their workers. If she wins, women all over the country are going to use this as an excuse to sue. I’m so damn proud of you, Ben. Miss Led Better was consigned to a career as a secondass employee only because she is a woman. That cannot be the law.

Why is there such a gender gap when it comes to which sex lives the longest? Globally, women tend to outlive men by at least five years. Yet why do doctors and researchers consistently fail to understand the inequality between the sexes when it comes to the ageing process? Annette Young talks to Dr Saher Mehdi, an Indian longevity scientist. Also, the focus may be on the new and first American pope of the Catholic Church but what about the women who make up half of the church? We report on how nuns are calling for greater inclusion as well as recognition of sexual abuse. Plus, with the Women’s Rugby World Cup around the corner, interest in the game is on the rise among young women in the UK and here in France. 
#women #science #pope

🔔 Subscribe to France 24 now: https://f24.my/YTen
🔴 LIVE – Watch FRANCE 24 English 24/7 here: https://f24.my/YTliveEN

🌍 Read the latest International News and Top Stories: https://www.france24.com/en/

Like us on Facebook: https://f24.my/FBen
Follow us on X: https://f24.my/Xen
Bluesky: https://f24.my/BSen and Threads: https://f24.my/THen
Browse the news in pictures on Instagram: https://f24.my/IGen
Discover our TikTok videos: https://f24.my/TKen
Get the latest top stories on Telegram: https://f24.my/TGen

18 comments

  1. Because if men lived longer than women, then feminist and leftist would have dubbed it as due to patriarchy and oppression

    But as women live longer than men then its due to positivity credit of women

  9. Women take backseat roles in society, men typically work in very high risk jobs including warfare and other dangerous hands-on roles that women avoid.

  11. Women are more likely to go to the doctor than men. Also, fat stores in slightly different locations on a womans body compared to a man's body, I saw some science doc about that, from memory it made a difference in men being more likely to have heart attacks than women. Not sure if that still holds up. Finally, men have more incidents of high risk behaviours than women.

Comments are closed.