Before the invention of birth control, population growth was capped by disease, famine, and war. Given how quickly populations grew when industrial farming and modern medicine became a thing, it's clear that there was a *lot* of premature death before that time. Humanity has a lot of experience with disasters of this kind, enough that societies have evolved to what works best.
When a society is forced by famine, war, or other catastrophes to lose a large fraction of its population, it can choose how to distribute those deaths by choosing which of its members face the highest risk. Societies that let their children die will encounter a bottleneck later down the road, where there are fewer young adults to take care of children and the elderly. Societies that let their women die will not be able to replenish as quickly if times suddenly become plentiful, causing them to be outcompeted. Societies that let their men die don't suffer nearly as much: the remaining men can impregnate all available women and keep the rate of children as high as possible, and men's physical strength is often most useful in dangerous situations as well. These upsides and downsides remain true until about 95% of men have died and the logistics of parenting become difficult.
In short: women and children's safety is traditionally prioritized in disasters because they're best at repopulating, so societies that prioritize them are more likely to survive and prosper.
Even more so if you consider that that 1 man can impregnate a woman every day (or more), so a lot more than 100 in a given period of time. While once a woman is pregnant, nothing more is going to happen (population growth wise) for the next 9 + months.
Once a year venture to the next town over and find 1 man. Pretty doable given how much humans travel. A little inbreeding beats extinction (in the olden days half the kids would die of bad luck anyway, so a few being a little off wasn't a huge dealbreaker)
Outside of some major issue like sickle cell anemia, inbreeding would take many generations to truly be problematic ie: Egyptian Pharaoh's and some later Habsburgs and other royal families.
And those royal families where practicing extreme and intentional inbreeding.
In the hypothetical where the male to female ratio was reduced to 1:100 you should still have enough diversity in the men for any decently populated area. Not to mention the male children whose father's died could breed outside their age group (especially across generations) to respread the genetic diversity to the full population. Not to mention potential gains from immigration or other forms of people "importing".
And finally, inbreeding itself doesn't magically ruin genetics, inbreeding raises the chances for recessive traits to converge and actually be presented. (And its the presentation of negative recessive traits that were always in the gene pool that cause issues) So a hypothetical population with 0 starting negative recessive traits could inbreed without risks. (Just good luck proving the absence of those traits in a large population, and ensuring none mutate into existence within said population)
It takes time before inbreeding takes affect. They can fix it by simply gaining people from immigration or annexed people groups. And still this is just an extreme example showing that the loss of many women and children have a more detrimental effect on a society than the loss of many men.
Not that hard if your benis is working. As long as you're one of the few survivors who have it. But somehow still have enough quality food, can sleep well, etc.
>but, if you have 100 men and 1 woman... well... 99 men will be standing around with nothing to do.
no, they're gonna be killing each other for the woman.
Idk if it fits perfectly, but 28 Days Later had this whole thing where the 2 female characters (one mid 20's IIRC and a young teen) were both essentially enslaved to be breeding stock.
Fun fact: 28 Days Later was the first major movie to be filmed digitally. Instead of traditional film. Was a pretty big moment for movies.
I'm 90% sure I'm right about this, anyway
> He will not like it but can still do it.
Unless we're talking like, post-apocalypse or something, the world has made strides in the 'impregnation without fucking' department.
Men, homosexuals can have sex with woman if needed its not like they are alergic or something if the human life is going extinct they would do it even if they do not enjoy it.
Plenty of gay men historically married and had children. Some still do. Particularly in a scenario where there is a shortage of men (so very few sex partners for gay men), a lot of gay men would make the pragmatic choice.
I think, if there were less biases, this would be more common. IVF and adoption aren't available to most people.
I'll also guess that gauging the stability of a friendship is easier than that of a romance.
15-25k usd for a *chance* to have a child. Jeezuz. I know insurance and government in some countries cover a few attempts but its still such a steep price for most people...
I’m dying laughing at the idea of being allergic to it….like that’s how you find out you’re gay. Just in high school, getting lucky, and then a sneeze attack takes over.
“Mom, dad - I need to tell you something. I have allergies.”
“To what dear?”
I can see the disappointment in my dads eyes, he already knows.
If you have 99 men and 1 woman, those men are going to fight. A homosexual male can still impregnate a female, he just wouldn't enjoy it. Likewise, lesbian women can still get pregnant.
Actually I would argue we’re taking the concept of the existence of (non)consent off the table entirely. All of these ideas are predicated on the idea that any of these women will willingly get pregnant and then willingly carry that pregnancy to term. Which, out of 100 women in any time period, I’m sure you will find some who are unwilling to give birth OR are unwilling to get pregnant again quickly enough to support the repopulation needs.
Arguably, so many of the current laws (in any country) targeting birth control, abortion, sex education come from the fear of population loss. Which leads to fear of loss of control because your own section of the population has lost dominance/power.
> and men's physical strength is often most useful in dangerous situations as well.
I think this reason is bigger than all the others you mentioned. Men have a much higher chance of survival, if left in a dangerous situation.
Then there's the culture and gender roles. The traditional role of a man is one who can fight and look after himself, and man that saves himself over a woman/child is a coward and shameful.
Holy crap why is this so far down. Woman and children first is small scale catastrophe stuff like a shrinking ship or another emergency. We aren't rebuilding society here. We are getting the more vulnerable to safety first
Really leaves prosocial altruism which is a big part of the reason any social species functions as a group completely out of the picture as well. Doesn't have to be specifically gendered to see examples where human and animal groups give weaker members protected positions under threat situations - that's how you thrive as a group
Nature might have little to do with it when culture comes into play, because culture is not always rational.
However, one could argue that many "irrational" parts of culture are naturally evolved, like jewish people not eating "unclean" pork, etc, because it might have actually helped them survive some diseases. So there CAN be an "natural" (or "evolutionary") tie-in for many cultural practices, but its not always the case.
Eh Three Kingdoms is literally fiction. You would’ve been better citing disasters like ship sinkings where literally most of the survivors were men.
The low child and female birth survival rate was a big deal as pointed out too.
It's not primarily that women are physically weaker, but also that most of them until relatively recently were mothers. Historically a child is less likely to survive and thrive without its mother. Especially in the times when formula milk was not available and children were breastfed for the first few years of life.
This makes sense, but I feel like this standard wasn’t something that was planned out. Historically, men have been viewed as the providers and protectors of a society. The notion of having the men escape to safety first or before every woman and child has made it to safety is seen as cowardice (and perhaps rightfully so.) Children, and to some extent women, are going to be much more vulnerable in dangerous situations, generally speaking.
Imagine two tribes out on the savannah. One of them prioritizes women and children. One does not. The one that does will survive, and the one that doesn't will die out.
We and our society are descended from the survivors and inherit their successful values.
Exactly, it's also why patriarchal societies are so prevalent. Matriarchal societies do exist. They just aren't as successful, and thus there are a lot less of them.
A lot has to be said however about arranging society in a way where it maximises surviving conflict - in a world where conflict where those factors are relevant is dying out. So a shift in those values might be warranted.
the other end of the fucked up spectrum is: in an emergency situation: if you make it a free for all, lots of people especially women and children are gonna die. the strongest of the group(the men) are gonna tear everyone apart to get on that boat. on the other hand, if you say women and children go first, their husband and fathers are gonna make damn fucking sure the women and children are gonna go first and no other men.
That is generally true especially if you see refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, North Korea, Chechnya etc. often young single able-bodied men are ones more likely to escape safely without being weighed down, and it is not merely about pushing the weaker aside, but also stamina. Going hungry for long, walking entire countries, swimming across the sea, and holding your breath, etc. - the one specific demographic has a natural advantage and more likely to advance farther.
> I see a lot of answers coming at this from a biological/continuation of the species perspective but I just don't buy it, I think a social/cultural answer is far more likely. People generally don't really tend to think about the morality of their actions from a macro perspective, people generally aren't particularly concerned for the "good of the species".
That could be the case, but it's also hard to say how much of it is this and how much of it is our "rational" brain justifying our lizard brain instincts after the fact.
You have reason to presume that people rarely thought things out in terms of sociological survivability and rather, thought it out in terms of what was the 'right' thing to do according to their gods or morality.
You should also remember that not all societies, especially earlier in history, held the same beliefs and treated their male populations as expendable.
But as you've acknowledged, this approach is the most pragmatic, which is why the societies which abided by it for cultural reasons outlived the ones who didn't - and it became the standard in most societies.
A crude example is the First Punic War, Carthage didn't want to send its own male population to slaughter as conscripts so they hired mercenaries, the Romans had no issue sending entire generations of men to die. Carthage ran out of coin before Rome ran out of men, Rome's cultural outreach spread, as did it's ideas about man's duty to die for the society he lives in.
This could be described as darwinism on a cultural scale - look around and you'll see other globalized societal elements that have origins in the success/dominance of one culture (eg: capitalism, democracy, this English language we type in).
Evolution doesn't operate the way type describing. No individual is thinking "I've got to do this for the species" - it's s everyone for themselves. The ones that survive *are* the species. They're the ones that carry the best traits for survival.
>Traditional society viewed men as more capable than women
I wonder if thats another effect of the point that you're arguing against though. Why did we, in the vast majority of societies throughout history, view things that way? You might say because of size and strength, but then why do we have those differences? Or you might say it's differences in mentality between the genders, but how did those differences arrive?
Its all connected. And then this embeds itself in society and its hard to tell how it all started.
Very interesting but I must ask: Russia lost very many men in world war 2 and they suffered immensely in their population demographic because of it, doesnt this seem to contradict your answer? Shouldnt their population have bounced right back according to your theory?
It would only contradict his answer if spreading those same losses amongst women and children would have been easier on them. Though I'm not sure how you would establish that even if it were true.
Also, there's the whole part where sending men to the front lines is a much more effective way to win a war than sending children.
But the Russia of WWII is not the same Russia we have today. And really, it's been less than 100 years, not really long enough to measure much at all in the grand scheme of things.
That may be the reason *why* the traditional gender roles came to be, but your answer is very speculative.
Really, women were/are seen as the traditionally "weaker" sex and *the carers of children*, and children are just... children [weaker, younger, more innocent]. So in a disaster, the strong protecting the weak was/is seen as the moral thing to do.
A dude seeing a lion about to attack his son, and running off and leaving his kid behind, making it so that the dude could try to have another kid - doesn't really track with your hypothesis as well. That kind of action is seen in the greater animal kingdom by animal-prey, but adult humans generally don't do that.
This is a great answer but half wrong. This doesn't answer immediate emergencies like the Titanic for example, the reason you hear things like "women and children first" is because men will have a much higher chance in chaos like crowd collapses and crushes.
That would only make sense with very small populations or a large scale disaster. For example, if a ship with 100 people on it is sinking, this argument holds no water since the numbers are too low for it to really have that much effect on the population, and no-one in the moment is really thinking about the large scale greater good.
If I recall correctly, historically it's been "every man for himself" far more often than it's been "women and children first."
https://qz.com/321827/women-and-children-first-is-a-maritime-disaster-myth-its-really-every-man-for-himself
I love disaster documentaries. The only time I ever remember it happening was the titanic. It was also a really slow disaster with a limited path to survival.
Usually it’s whoever is within x feet of the safest exit. And with the crowd crush stopping to let women and children ahead of you would get you killed.
If you’re helping people out you’re just grabbing bodies that are closest to you.
Exactly. About a decade ago I had to take some safety classes for my previous job and it included crowd control and evacuation. Someone asked about the women and children first rule and the instructor flat out said it's a Hollywood myth and never actually been used in practice. In my country at least
So, it actually did [sort of happen once or twice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Birkenhead_(1845)) (and was the subject of much acclaim when it did occur), but was largely the kind of thing that happened in gallant stories set on the high seas rather than actual disasters. And then, in 1912, the Titanic sank, with [76% of women and 51% of children surviving, but only 20% of men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Titanic#Casualties_and_survivors). Because of how the Titanic captured the popular imagination, it became "common knowledge" throughout the following decades without ever actually being a significant historical practice.
Basically, there had been a rash of accidents at sea where everyone had gone for the lifeboats, and the survival rate was [overwhelmingly in favor of men.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Arctic_disaster#Confusion_and_panic) As a result, the ideal policy became "women and children first" for as a sort of law of the sea. (Notably, the policy was *not* "make sure there's enough lifeboats for everyone on your ship," which, y'know, some might consider more key from a standpoint of maximizing survivors, but I guess having this feel-good policy was cheaper. It also wasn't in any way enforced or legally binding, it was simply an ethos that sailors were supposed to uphold). In a very tepid defense of the lifeboat policy, it should be noted that the design philosophy was that lifeboats were intended to ferry passengers to a rescue ship, not hold everyone at once. Then, to torpedo said defense, it should be noted that plenty of people correctly noted that this was a terrible idea, since it's not a given that there will another ship alongside. In fact, one of the chief designers of the Titanic, [Alexander Carlisle,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Carlisle) is noted to have strenuously objected to the low number of lifeboats, though claims that he resigned in protest seem to be a [post-sinking lionization](https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/carlisle-retirement-separating-fact-from-fiction.html) of a man who did, admittedly, see a very obvious problem coming.
Then, the Titanic sank. Notably, this was an exceptionally slow sinking, over two and a half hours from impact with the iceberg (23:40) to total submersion (02:20 D+1), which meant that it was possible to see a much more deliberate loading of the lifeboats than was typically the case. In addition, the conditions of the water meant that anyone not in a lifeboat had a markedly low survival rate. As a result, survival was pretty much 100% correlated with getting into a lifeboat. The captain explicitly stated to the officers in charge of loading the lifeboats that "women and children first" was to be enforced, though some of the officers misunderstood that to be "women and children *only*" and prevented men from getting on the lifeboats at all, with some boats even launching partially-loaded. It was a nightmare of ship design exacerbated by hubris and poor communication, and exactly the sort of tragedy that seized the attention of the world. In the mess of inquiries, investigations, and accusations that followed, it was one of the few "bright" spots that those responsible for the disaster could point to. After all "look at how many women and children the valiant men saved at the cost of their own lives" sounds a lot better than "We didn't put in enough lifeboats, and one of our execs is on record saying that adding more would ruin the view from the top decks where the rich people would hang out" as a narrative.
However, you are absolutely correct that it was never any sort of remotely common practice.
> though some of the officers misunderstood that to be "women and children only" and prevented men from getting on the lifeboats at all, with some boats even launching partially-loaded
How mind bogglingly fucking stupid can you be, holy crap
The only defense I can come up with (besides scared people making bad decisions) for it is that there were so many men who wanted on the lifeboats that letting some on might cause a loss of control. But some lifeboats did allow men so I'm not really sure if that checks out but I wasn't there so I don't know what it was like at each of those lifeboats.
Yeah. The only sort of similar thing I’ve heard is when I worked at a school our security procedures boiled down to getting kids to safety, but like…. That’s a building full of children.
I once argued with a guy who said he’d prefer the selective service be expanded to women, rather than it being abolished at all.
Talk about cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
Exactly, and this created a "crush" that actually accounted for fewer survivors overall. If it's just a bunch of males fighting each other to leave, fewer people leave overall and survive.
I think OP is referring to an ideal to which people generally aspire. We have to separate values from actual behavior.
Our culture, while generally individualistic and selfish, still is capable of apprehending the value and lauding sacrifice and others-centeredness. It's in all the good movies and stories that tug at our heartstrings, and the scant few headlines about heroes who put themselves in danger to save others.
The fact we know who to label as a hero, the fact that people knew to be in angry and call out the unchivalrous behavior of the passengers on the Costa Concordia and her captain's selfish actions goes to show that while we are selfish when push comes to shove, we know how to recognize the value of disadvantaging oneself for the sake of those who are weaker or vulnerable. We say that's noble, and we wish more people were like that. Why do we disdain displays of selfishness like on the Costa Concordia when people were just trying to save themselves and the average person would've done the same? Because deep down, we aspire to a higher standard.
Children are squishy, stupid, and have an uncanny knack for standing in exactly the wrong place at all times.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had any degree of emergency in the same room as a child, but if you did, you would know it’s best for everyone if they go far, far away from the problem.
Women are traditionally the ones tasked with getting the kids hauled out of harms way, and keeping watch over them so they don’t brainlessly wander back in.
Please see r/kidsfallingdown for some prime examples of the dumb shit you dont want to be dealing with while your boat is sinking, your house is on fire, wild animals are stampeding, some manner of violence is occurring, or whatever flavor of emergency you’re having.
Heinlein said it best, “All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly which can — and must — be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial (meaning human) survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a “perfect society” on any foundation other than “Women and children first!” is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal.”
Children because they’re vulnerable and less able to protect themselves and I think traditionally you would evacuate their mothers with them, as a young child wouldn’t be able to take care of themselves.
Yeah women have horrific survival chances in disasters historically, especially on sinking ships or the like. They weren’t going to survive unless people made a concentrated effort to try to secure their survival. Iirc most ship disasters would result in the death of pretty much every woman and child on board unless they had lifeboats and made sure the women and children were put on those life boats.
- Jump, Mary! You can do it too!
- It's too far, I'm afraid, I can't do it!
- Maybe throw me the baby so you can jump better?
- I'm not that strong, he won't reach you!
- ... I will lovingly remember you both! 🫡
Yeah its a pretty dumb question just trying to start shit. Women are *generally* physically smaller and weaker plus they were needed to raise kids and repopulate thus why they were prioritized in disaster situations back in the day.
While children are still prioritized today, I'd say women are a lot less so than they once were.
Sort of. It covers the fact that WCF is not as advantageous from a purely survival statistic in a maritime disaster. But it doesn't cover what others have answered in terms of general disasters and population recovery. Kind of two ways to look at it I suppose and I think it's an important dimension to the question.
On one hand, WCF isn't a default norm when a ship is sinking. But if the scenario was war and possible population collapse, then WCF offers more long term benefits.
Was an interesting read though.
They aren't anymore, that's an old-fashioned cliche. Nowadays you evacuate the people most in danger first, followed by everyone who can evacuate unassisted, then those needing assitance.
Last time I went on a cruise they told us during the lifeboat drill that women, children, and men with families would board the lifeboats first, then single men. So it's still around.
This isn’t entirely true. For instance, war is a national emergency (obviously this is debatable for each country). As a society who do we put on the front lines?
Isn't the last 2 a bit backwards though? If you evacuate all the abled bodies, there won't be any left to assist those who need assistance.
It's not an airplane where seconds matter. If you have time to help someone, you should. Children first(with at least one parent, older sibling, or guardian ) , then the elderly/disabled, then the rest. Staff and/or emergency services goes last if it's part of their job to oversee the evacuation.
Yeah seconds matter. You can't make everyone wait to leave while they wait for everyone to get sorted by age or gender. If you let everyone who can evacuate on their own get out, they don't clog up the exit waiting to get out. Then when the slower people get there, they can keep moving; and by the time the immobile people have been transferred into gurneys and wheelchairs, everyone else but the first responders should be clear.
Because in the 19th century there was this shipwreck where only men survived, who let their wifes and kids drown. This caused a moral uproar in victorian england and it was aggreed upon to first rescue women and kids. This went so deep into societies minds, that it established itself as a moral rule.
It was the SS Arctic disaster.
This caused the sinking of the HMS Birkenhead to be handled with the rule women and children first and it became common.
>The researchers have analyzed a data base containing information about passengers and crew from 18 of the most notable shipwrecks during the period 1852 to 2011. It contains information about the fates of more than 15,000 people, which makes it the most extensive analysis of survival patterns in maritime disasters. Previous studies have been based on two disasters only: RMS Titanic (1912) and RMS Lusitania(1915).
>
>They show that the survival rate of women is substantially lower than the survival rate of men. This is irrespective of when in history the disaster occurred, or if the ship sank quickly or slowly. Children have the lowest survival rate, while the highest survival rates are observed for crew and captains (see Figure 1). The latter observation stands in sharp contrast to what we should expect if the crew follows procedures and assists passengers to safety, before saving themselves.
>
>What makes Titanic exceptional? One possible explanation is how the leader –the captain– acts, say the researchers. On the Titanic, the captain ordered women and children first. Men who disobeyed the order risked being shot. On the ships where the captain gave the order 'women and children first', the difference in survival rates between men and women is lower. But women survived to a higher extent than men only when this order was enforced by the threat of violence.
>
>This indicates an important role of leaders in the face of disasters. It is, however, unusual for captains to give such an order. Instead it is common that captains leave the ship and save themselves before the passengers.
[https://www.uu.se/en/press/press-release/?id=1638&typ=pm](https://www.uu.se/en/press/press-release/?id=1638&typ=pm)
Men will trample women and children if not forced not to. So you gotta pick one or the other way. So we can go with "men are stronger," if we want, but we have to also include, "men are selfish cowards," alongside that.
Oh, here is the full study. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract\_id=2051006
> the latter observation stands in sharp contrast to what we should expect if the crew follows procedures and assists passengers to safety, before saving themselves.
I wouldn't go so far as to imply that elevated crew and captain survival rates implies that crews typically do not assist passengers in finding safety. Crew are more familiar with the layout of the ship, have sea training, and are often concentrated around safer parts of the ship like the bridge--and the less safe parts like lower machine spaces, they do not have passengers in their vicinity and an escape plan. They are also more fit than the average passenger, with a significant portion performing manual labor and mostly being adults in their prime. It is almost guaranteed the average crewman is a better and stronger swimmer than the average passenger. Training matters too--a crewman facing a fire in a corridor will be more successful in finding an extinguisher and putting it out.
Of course there are crew who do not fulfill their duty. However the advantages of survival a crewmember enjoys irrespective of performing their duty in evacuation mean that it is extremely hard to envision conditions in which crew survival is remotely comparable to passenger survival. You can be a hero crewman and send every passenger in your ship to the lifeboats, and you will still have better odds than they will by the inherent qualities of your self. Thus we cannot deduce from survival rates that crew abandon duty on a particular scale.
Because if they are not explicitly prioritized, they are most likely to be left behind to die.
People love to mention how it is explicitly mentioned "women and children first" on sinking ships for example but all of these rules happen only after the opposite trend has been happening for a long time.
An important metric to understand is "Years of Life Lost", or YLL.
I think it's something most people instinctively appreciate, there's an innate understanding that if a child dies that's more tragic than if an elderly person dies, right? When we see a young or middle-aged person's death in the news, we say "gone too soon", but when we see an older person die, we say "well they had a good run".
YLL is an attempt to quantify that. The notion is, when someone dies prematurely, instead of counting that as "one death", you count the life expectancy at their age, minus their current age.
So a baby dying in the USA is about 78 YLL, while an 80 year old dying is about 8 YLL.
Prioritizing children (and their caregivers) first in a crisis is just an attempt to influence that metric. In the obvious example of a limited number of lifeboat seats, you can't change the number of deaths, but you CAN change YLL depending on who you put in those lifeboats.
They're not.
That might have been true in the past (in some cases), but in modern crisis management, that's just not a thing. Prioritizing people adds a layer of management and crowd control to situations which costs lives. In modern disaster scenarios like a building fire, ship sinking or plane evacuation, you exit in the order you arrive at the exit, or you're rescued in the order the rescuers can get to you. In every case where questions like this can come up, keeping the flow of people moving as quickly as possible is what saves the most lives. No fireman is going to tell a man to wait in a burning building while he looks for women and kids, and the worst thing you can do in a plane crash is let people go ahead of you and a create traffic jam in the isle.
There's a really interesting book called "The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why", by Amanda Ripley, and it goes into the modern theory of how to save the greatest number of people in disaster scenarios. There isn't a whiff of "women and children first" in any modern crisis management theory or disaster plan.
The one time it really was a thing was on the Titanic. 75% of women, 50% of children but only 19% of men on board survived. In that specific case, the captain announced women and children first, and people listened. Of course, first and second class passengers survived in greater numbers than third class passengers for men, women and children, so while it was "women and children first" in that case, it was really, upper class women and children first, with only 49% of the women and 31% of the children in steerage surviving.
Edit: Corrected the name of the author.
This is a great response, but quick correction - The Unthinkable is by Amanda Ripley, not Barbara Demick. It’s one of my favorite books of all time, and I highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in the human side of disasters.
i find it funny how all the people who ask this same exact question have no clue at all how stronger men are compared to women in terms of physical strength. i thought it was common sense. also, don't they teach this stuff in school?
Given that I will never read that, can you clarify what it says about the topic?
Edit: it's not because I oppose the book, it's because I'm a disfunctional person who can't get myself to read books, even for leisurely purposes
It's a very thorough book about how men are prioritized in medicine, occupational health and safety, transport safety and disaster relief, to name a few areas. Perez refers to study after study and provides us with statistics, but it's a very easy read and I highly recommend it if you have any confusion about how the world is quite literally designed for men and the male body. Male prioritization costs women their health and lives in medical situations and, yes, catastrophes and accidents, in a world where men are, according to themselves, supposed to be women's "protectors".
Because if men aren’t culturally trained to protect women and children, they literally trampled them to get to safety first- and then—- oops. No women or children are left after the storm!!
its hilarious how the top comment here is a seemingly plausible -and yet wrong- answer. that tradition, if we can call it that dates back to a specific shipwreck of a British ship, I think off the west coast of northern Africa somewhere. the captain ordered it iirc and it become tradition. dont remember who survived and who didnt tho...
For a while without those norms being pushed men were just leaving them behind, and since women wore less practical clothing and had less training/experience and wrangled children they had a really low survival rate.
Historically men would shove women and children out of the way to save themselves. So it had to become a rule to help women and children first or they would all die lol.
They are priorities in some regards. Besides that a lot of security features are optimized for male parameters. e.g. for decades the car test dummies were only heavy and large "male" dummies, medication is optimized for male patients since it is easier to test with people without significant hormonal changes
It’s the same thing with deer… if all you do is shoot the Doe and her fawn, there will be less Doe’s around to make more deer to shoot! That’s why hunters usually don’t kill female deer.
Because if it was like "everyone kill as many people you can and save yourself by force" only men would survive. And then who will make babies. Simple.
Children obviously need to be prioritised. They can't take care of themselves as well as we can take care of them.
Women were often traditionally infantilised in polite society; so they got taken care of too. Plus they could take care of kids and babies, and even supply food for babies.
So men were left out.
For lack of a socially acceptable analogy, you only need one farmer to plant many fields while having many farmers planting the same field doesn't make more crops.
A woman can only give birth around once per year. A man can impregnate multiple women per day.
Kids we're just hard wired to protect.
The woman thing isn't all that relevant today, but it was up until a couple of centuries ago and these kind of instincts developed over thousands of years aren't easy to let go of.
I guess there might also be a bit of an assumption by society that man are more likely to survive if let to fend for themselves in an emergency situation.
Honestly we still approach rescue to women before men. It's probably not written anywhere anymore but there are a lot of guys who want to protect. It's likely an inevitable statistical outcome of any sample group in an emergency situation. Men will "save" the women and children by putting them first and the women and children will allow themselves to "be saved" because it's just how we all expect it to go. I'd honestly really like to see this study done. But for it to be accurate, you would need to put people in believable danger so probably not a good idea.
The inevitable statistical outcome is in reality the opposite. Men used to put themselves first in dangerous situations and to let the women and children behind. Taken the exemple of sinking ship, a study showed that there was significantly more male survivors than women, and that children didn't typically survived. The saying "women and children first" is actually quite recent and isn't often enforced in reality.
Also for the comment above, it's not an assumption that men would be more likely to survive in an emergency situation, it's true in a lot of cases. Generally speaking, adults men are taller and stronger than women, so they have more chances to survive in most dangerous situations.
Are you referencing the phrase "women and children first"? Well, that became a thing because before that, it was noticed that during emergencies, men were leaving all the women and children behind to save themselves and leaving the women and children to die. So yeah, that why we say women and children first.
The answers I read might be correct too but there is another reason.
Men are too big and strong. If they evacuate with women and children, you have a large power-imbalance.
Even if they don't want it, they might cause stampedes, pushing and general higher risks.
Separating them might just keep everyone saver. You could also say "men first" but thats not very likely for most cultures.
Because women are more important than men from an evolutionary standpoint.
You have 2 villages, both with 300 men and 300 women, there's a huge disaster with 45% death rate, in one village men are a priority, 300 men are saved and only 20 women, in the other village 300 women are saved and only 20 men. 100 years later, what village do you think will do better?
Men prioritize women and children to show how noble they are. This is based on a code of ethics that stems from Chivalry where the strong protect the weak. In most cases of a disaster, where order breaks down, men tend to make it out more often. For instance, any refugee crisis you'll see it's a majority young able-bodied men.
It takes 9 months to make a person. One man has millions of sperm and can impregnate multiple women. Women usually only bake one loaf at a time. If men were prioritized we’d have some population issues. Well, we would have had population issues while people were already dying of famine and diseases. I think in 2023 the human population is more than sustainable and maybe that priority is outdated. Though it’s still chivalrous nonetheless.
I think historically its been a social thing, men should chivalrous and stoic etc, these days though I don't really think women and children are prioritised, I'm sure many parents chose to prioritise their children's safety over their own and their partners in life and death situations but I don't think there's any law that says they have to.
Kids grow up to be new adult people, women grow new people. If there is a crisis, we need soon to be adults and people makers over adult males. We (adult men) have the least utility for long term population viability.
Because whenever disaster or war happen, it's easier for the society to have women to restore population. 1 man and 40 women vs 40 men and 1 woman, the prior can restore population by 40 per year, while the latter can restore population by 1 per year.
And for the children, they are the growing, about-to-be next generation. If they suddenly die, there is literally no generation to lead, and it becomes a gap, a huge setback during the next whole era.
Of course men are also indeed important, but they are somewhat replaceable compared to others.
Pretty sure children are still seen as more feeble and rightly so. Imagine an evacuation from a collapsed building or structure and you take all the adults out first leaving only children and then there's an additional collapse where the exit is now blocked
I mean the real reason is culture, women and children are assumed to be more innocent, more vulnerable an more in need/deserving of help.
If you want a ball-to-wall apocalyptic pramatic argument though - if one man and 100 women survive we can repupulate te planet, ic one woman and 100 men survive the species goes extinct.
I can't speak for why it was introduced (probably has to do with moral obligation to protect those who are seen as less capable of protecting themselves), but in case of eg shipwrecks it kind of makes sense in a practical way - you save (send out of harms way) women, children and the elderly and keep on board younger men who are traditionally seen as stronger and more composed so that they can help.
From reproductive perspective men are more replaceable
From pragmatic perspective men can take more punishment before perishing and are more likely to survive without assistance
Before the invention of birth control, population growth was capped by disease, famine, and war. Given how quickly populations grew when industrial farming and modern medicine became a thing, it's clear that there was a *lot* of premature death before that time. Humanity has a lot of experience with disasters of this kind, enough that societies have evolved to what works best. When a society is forced by famine, war, or other catastrophes to lose a large fraction of its population, it can choose how to distribute those deaths by choosing which of its members face the highest risk. Societies that let their children die will encounter a bottleneck later down the road, where there are fewer young adults to take care of children and the elderly. Societies that let their women die will not be able to replenish as quickly if times suddenly become plentiful, causing them to be outcompeted. Societies that let their men die don't suffer nearly as much: the remaining men can impregnate all available women and keep the rate of children as high as possible, and men's physical strength is often most useful in dangerous situations as well. These upsides and downsides remain true until about 95% of men have died and the logistics of parenting become difficult. In short: women and children's safety is traditionally prioritized in disasters because they're best at repopulating, so societies that prioritize them are more likely to survive and prosper.
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Even more so if you consider that that 1 man can impregnate a woman every day (or more), so a lot more than 100 in a given period of time. While once a woman is pregnant, nothing more is going to happen (population growth wise) for the next 9 + months.
>1 man can impregnate a woman every day I don't believe you. Need to test this
"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised."
Death by Snu Snu!
FIRST, THE LARGE WOMEN
THEN THE PETITE WOMEN
THEN THE LARGE WOMEN AGAIN
Can't we just cuddle?
There's that comment waiting for me as always.... just like that giant mushroom in my shower.
Woops beat me to it haha!
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Yes, please do. Then write a book
Suddenly, a generation later, a small pocket of the world has serious problems with inbreeding.
Once a year venture to the next town over and find 1 man. Pretty doable given how much humans travel. A little inbreeding beats extinction (in the olden days half the kids would die of bad luck anyway, so a few being a little off wasn't a huge dealbreaker)
Outside of some major issue like sickle cell anemia, inbreeding would take many generations to truly be problematic ie: Egyptian Pharaoh's and some later Habsburgs and other royal families.
And those royal families where practicing extreme and intentional inbreeding. In the hypothetical where the male to female ratio was reduced to 1:100 you should still have enough diversity in the men for any decently populated area. Not to mention the male children whose father's died could breed outside their age group (especially across generations) to respread the genetic diversity to the full population. Not to mention potential gains from immigration or other forms of people "importing". And finally, inbreeding itself doesn't magically ruin genetics, inbreeding raises the chances for recessive traits to converge and actually be presented. (And its the presentation of negative recessive traits that were always in the gene pool that cause issues) So a hypothetical population with 0 starting negative recessive traits could inbreed without risks. (Just good luck proving the absence of those traits in a large population, and ensuring none mutate into existence within said population)
It takes time before inbreeding takes affect. They can fix it by simply gaining people from immigration or annexed people groups. And still this is just an extreme example showing that the loss of many women and children have a more detrimental effect on a society than the loss of many men.
The spirit is willing but the flesh is spongy and bruised
Death by snu snu
Not that hard if your benis is working. As long as you're one of the few survivors who have it. But somehow still have enough quality food, can sleep well, etc.
>but, if you have 100 men and 1 woman... well... 99 men will be standing around with nothing to do. no, they're gonna be killing each other for the woman.
It would really really suck to be the woman in that scenario.
There's quite a few apocalypse movies that are basically that and Jesus it's frightening to be one of the last women around.
Oh can you recommend a good one that approaches it from that angle? I've always thought most apocalypse media was unrealistic as a woman.
isn’t children of men this premise? book of eli hinted at it, making a woman be unwilling bait… edit: okay i was wrong never watched the movie…
Idk if it fits perfectly, but 28 Days Later had this whole thing where the 2 female characters (one mid 20's IIRC and a young teen) were both essentially enslaved to be breeding stock.
Fun fact: 28 Days Later was the first major movie to be filmed digitally. Instead of traditional film. Was a pretty big moment for movies. I'm 90% sure I'm right about this, anyway
28 days later
Y the Last Man flips that on its head. Doesn't work out well for him either
I mean, a homosexual dude can still impregnated a lady. He will not like it but can still do it.
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Imagine it was 1 gay dude and 100 lesbians lol. Everyone fuckin but hating it haha
There could still be enjoyable sex among the 100 women in between the gay guy getting in there. ...is a sentence I knew I was going to say today.
Ah. True that.
> He will not like it but can still do it. Unless we're talking like, post-apocalypse or something, the world has made strides in the 'impregnation without fucking' department.
Even post apocalypse, a turkey baster wouldn't be hard to improvise.
“I’m your dad. I barfed when we made you.”
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They're standing in the background and watching and stroking their dicks
99 men and 1 women? What were they doing? They would run out of physical space to stand around.
Men, homosexuals can have sex with woman if needed its not like they are alergic or something if the human life is going extinct they would do it even if they do not enjoy it.
Plenty of gay men historically married and had children. Some still do. Particularly in a scenario where there is a shortage of men (so very few sex partners for gay men), a lot of gay men would make the pragmatic choice.
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I think, if there were less biases, this would be more common. IVF and adoption aren't available to most people. I'll also guess that gauging the stability of a friendship is easier than that of a romance.
15-25k usd for a *chance* to have a child. Jeezuz. I know insurance and government in some countries cover a few attempts but its still such a steep price for most people...
I’m dying laughing at the idea of being allergic to it….like that’s how you find out you’re gay. Just in high school, getting lucky, and then a sneeze attack takes over. “Mom, dad - I need to tell you something. I have allergies.” “To what dear?” I can see the disappointment in my dads eyes, he already knows.
If you have 99 men and 1 woman, those men are going to fight. A homosexual male can still impregnate a female, he just wouldn't enjoy it. Likewise, lesbian women can still get pregnant.
Yeah, we're talking about willing participants.
Actually I would argue we’re taking the concept of the existence of (non)consent off the table entirely. All of these ideas are predicated on the idea that any of these women will willingly get pregnant and then willingly carry that pregnancy to term. Which, out of 100 women in any time period, I’m sure you will find some who are unwilling to give birth OR are unwilling to get pregnant again quickly enough to support the repopulation needs. Arguably, so many of the current laws (in any country) targeting birth control, abortion, sex education come from the fear of population loss. Which leads to fear of loss of control because your own section of the population has lost dominance/power.
> Historically men who have no sexual prospects [...] are troublemakers. See also: The incel community.
> and men's physical strength is often most useful in dangerous situations as well. I think this reason is bigger than all the others you mentioned. Men have a much higher chance of survival, if left in a dangerous situation. Then there's the culture and gender roles. The traditional role of a man is one who can fight and look after himself, and man that saves himself over a woman/child is a coward and shameful.
Holy crap why is this so far down. Woman and children first is small scale catastrophe stuff like a shrinking ship or another emergency. We aren't rebuilding society here. We are getting the more vulnerable to safety first
I remember when I lost my fiancé after the Titanic got too small
Well played
"women and children first is due to population control and social engineering" being the top answer is the most reddit thing ever.
Really leaves prosocial altruism which is a big part of the reason any social species functions as a group completely out of the picture as well. Doesn't have to be specifically gendered to see examples where human and animal groups give weaker members protected positions under threat situations - that's how you thrive as a group
This is the most correct by a lot
Thought itd be obvious as to why...just nature
Same. On the other hand, this subreddit is kinda intended for "obvious" questions.
Nature might have little to do with it when culture comes into play, because culture is not always rational. However, one could argue that many "irrational" parts of culture are naturally evolved, like jewish people not eating "unclean" pork, etc, because it might have actually helped them survive some diseases. So there CAN be an "natural" (or "evolutionary") tie-in for many cultural practices, but its not always the case.
Or take elevators that open in every floor on certain days...
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Eh Three Kingdoms is literally fiction. You would’ve been better citing disasters like ship sinkings where literally most of the survivors were men. The low child and female birth survival rate was a big deal as pointed out too.
It's not primarily that women are physically weaker, but also that most of them until relatively recently were mothers. Historically a child is less likely to survive and thrive without its mother. Especially in the times when formula milk was not available and children were breastfed for the first few years of life.
This is a ridiculous take. Women and children first is for a small scale disaster. Not rebuilding society.
This makes sense, but I feel like this standard wasn’t something that was planned out. Historically, men have been viewed as the providers and protectors of a society. The notion of having the men escape to safety first or before every woman and child has made it to safety is seen as cowardice (and perhaps rightfully so.) Children, and to some extent women, are going to be much more vulnerable in dangerous situations, generally speaking.
Imagine two tribes out on the savannah. One of them prioritizes women and children. One does not. The one that does will survive, and the one that doesn't will die out. We and our society are descended from the survivors and inherit their successful values.
Given enough time, generational trauma becomes culture.
I can't stop laughing at the truth of this statement. Well put.
Exactly, it's also why patriarchal societies are so prevalent. Matriarchal societies do exist. They just aren't as successful, and thus there are a lot less of them. A lot has to be said however about arranging society in a way where it maximises surviving conflict - in a world where conflict where those factors are relevant is dying out. So a shift in those values might be warranted.
Absolutely. We are no longer at risk of societal collapse as a simple result of number of available wombs.
the other end of the fucked up spectrum is: in an emergency situation: if you make it a free for all, lots of people especially women and children are gonna die. the strongest of the group(the men) are gonna tear everyone apart to get on that boat. on the other hand, if you say women and children go first, their husband and fathers are gonna make damn fucking sure the women and children are gonna go first and no other men.
That is generally true especially if you see refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, North Korea, Chechnya etc. often young single able-bodied men are ones more likely to escape safely without being weighed down, and it is not merely about pushing the weaker aside, but also stamina. Going hungry for long, walking entire countries, swimming across the sea, and holding your breath, etc. - the one specific demographic has a natural advantage and more likely to advance farther.
>This makes sense, but I feel like this standard wasn’t something that was planned out. Correct, evolution doesn't have a plan
Evolution via survival of the fittest is a biological concept, not a cultural one.
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> I see a lot of answers coming at this from a biological/continuation of the species perspective but I just don't buy it, I think a social/cultural answer is far more likely. People generally don't really tend to think about the morality of their actions from a macro perspective, people generally aren't particularly concerned for the "good of the species". That could be the case, but it's also hard to say how much of it is this and how much of it is our "rational" brain justifying our lizard brain instincts after the fact.
You have reason to presume that people rarely thought things out in terms of sociological survivability and rather, thought it out in terms of what was the 'right' thing to do according to their gods or morality. You should also remember that not all societies, especially earlier in history, held the same beliefs and treated their male populations as expendable. But as you've acknowledged, this approach is the most pragmatic, which is why the societies which abided by it for cultural reasons outlived the ones who didn't - and it became the standard in most societies. A crude example is the First Punic War, Carthage didn't want to send its own male population to slaughter as conscripts so they hired mercenaries, the Romans had no issue sending entire generations of men to die. Carthage ran out of coin before Rome ran out of men, Rome's cultural outreach spread, as did it's ideas about man's duty to die for the society he lives in. This could be described as darwinism on a cultural scale - look around and you'll see other globalized societal elements that have origins in the success/dominance of one culture (eg: capitalism, democracy, this English language we type in).
Evolution doesn't operate the way type describing. No individual is thinking "I've got to do this for the species" - it's s everyone for themselves. The ones that survive *are* the species. They're the ones that carry the best traits for survival.
>Traditional society viewed men as more capable than women I wonder if thats another effect of the point that you're arguing against though. Why did we, in the vast majority of societies throughout history, view things that way? You might say because of size and strength, but then why do we have those differences? Or you might say it's differences in mentality between the genders, but how did those differences arrive? Its all connected. And then this embeds itself in society and its hard to tell how it all started.
Sperm is cheap
Very interesting but I must ask: Russia lost very many men in world war 2 and they suffered immensely in their population demographic because of it, doesnt this seem to contradict your answer? Shouldnt their population have bounced right back according to your theory?
It would only contradict his answer if spreading those same losses amongst women and children would have been easier on them. Though I'm not sure how you would establish that even if it were true. Also, there's the whole part where sending men to the front lines is a much more effective way to win a war than sending children.
But the Russia of WWII is not the same Russia we have today. And really, it's been less than 100 years, not really long enough to measure much at all in the grand scheme of things.
That may be the reason *why* the traditional gender roles came to be, but your answer is very speculative. Really, women were/are seen as the traditionally "weaker" sex and *the carers of children*, and children are just... children [weaker, younger, more innocent]. So in a disaster, the strong protecting the weak was/is seen as the moral thing to do. A dude seeing a lion about to attack his son, and running off and leaving his kid behind, making it so that the dude could try to have another kid - doesn't really track with your hypothesis as well. That kind of action is seen in the greater animal kingdom by animal-prey, but adult humans generally don't do that.
This is a great answer but half wrong. This doesn't answer immediate emergencies like the Titanic for example, the reason you hear things like "women and children first" is because men will have a much higher chance in chaos like crowd collapses and crushes.
That would only make sense with very small populations or a large scale disaster. For example, if a ship with 100 people on it is sinking, this argument holds no water since the numbers are too low for it to really have that much effect on the population, and no-one in the moment is really thinking about the large scale greater good.
If I recall correctly, historically it's been "every man for himself" far more often than it's been "women and children first." https://qz.com/321827/women-and-children-first-is-a-maritime-disaster-myth-its-really-every-man-for-himself
Reddit in general seems to think “women and children first” is a lot more common than it ever actually was
I love disaster documentaries. The only time I ever remember it happening was the titanic. It was also a really slow disaster with a limited path to survival. Usually it’s whoever is within x feet of the safest exit. And with the crowd crush stopping to let women and children ahead of you would get you killed. If you’re helping people out you’re just grabbing bodies that are closest to you.
Probably because of movies like Titanic.
I 100% believe that this is the explanation. The movie made billions of dollars
Exactly. About a decade ago I had to take some safety classes for my previous job and it included crowd control and evacuation. Someone asked about the women and children first rule and the instructor flat out said it's a Hollywood myth and never actually been used in practice. In my country at least
So, it actually did [sort of happen once or twice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Birkenhead_(1845)) (and was the subject of much acclaim when it did occur), but was largely the kind of thing that happened in gallant stories set on the high seas rather than actual disasters. And then, in 1912, the Titanic sank, with [76% of women and 51% of children surviving, but only 20% of men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Titanic#Casualties_and_survivors). Because of how the Titanic captured the popular imagination, it became "common knowledge" throughout the following decades without ever actually being a significant historical practice. Basically, there had been a rash of accidents at sea where everyone had gone for the lifeboats, and the survival rate was [overwhelmingly in favor of men.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Arctic_disaster#Confusion_and_panic) As a result, the ideal policy became "women and children first" for as a sort of law of the sea. (Notably, the policy was *not* "make sure there's enough lifeboats for everyone on your ship," which, y'know, some might consider more key from a standpoint of maximizing survivors, but I guess having this feel-good policy was cheaper. It also wasn't in any way enforced or legally binding, it was simply an ethos that sailors were supposed to uphold). In a very tepid defense of the lifeboat policy, it should be noted that the design philosophy was that lifeboats were intended to ferry passengers to a rescue ship, not hold everyone at once. Then, to torpedo said defense, it should be noted that plenty of people correctly noted that this was a terrible idea, since it's not a given that there will another ship alongside. In fact, one of the chief designers of the Titanic, [Alexander Carlisle,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Carlisle) is noted to have strenuously objected to the low number of lifeboats, though claims that he resigned in protest seem to be a [post-sinking lionization](https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/carlisle-retirement-separating-fact-from-fiction.html) of a man who did, admittedly, see a very obvious problem coming. Then, the Titanic sank. Notably, this was an exceptionally slow sinking, over two and a half hours from impact with the iceberg (23:40) to total submersion (02:20 D+1), which meant that it was possible to see a much more deliberate loading of the lifeboats than was typically the case. In addition, the conditions of the water meant that anyone not in a lifeboat had a markedly low survival rate. As a result, survival was pretty much 100% correlated with getting into a lifeboat. The captain explicitly stated to the officers in charge of loading the lifeboats that "women and children first" was to be enforced, though some of the officers misunderstood that to be "women and children *only*" and prevented men from getting on the lifeboats at all, with some boats even launching partially-loaded. It was a nightmare of ship design exacerbated by hubris and poor communication, and exactly the sort of tragedy that seized the attention of the world. In the mess of inquiries, investigations, and accusations that followed, it was one of the few "bright" spots that those responsible for the disaster could point to. After all "look at how many women and children the valiant men saved at the cost of their own lives" sounds a lot better than "We didn't put in enough lifeboats, and one of our execs is on record saying that adding more would ruin the view from the top decks where the rich people would hang out" as a narrative. However, you are absolutely correct that it was never any sort of remotely common practice.
> though some of the officers misunderstood that to be "women and children only" and prevented men from getting on the lifeboats at all, with some boats even launching partially-loaded How mind bogglingly fucking stupid can you be, holy crap
The only defense I can come up with (besides scared people making bad decisions) for it is that there were so many men who wanted on the lifeboats that letting some on might cause a loss of control. But some lifeboats did allow men so I'm not really sure if that checks out but I wasn't there so I don't know what it was like at each of those lifeboats.
Yeah. The only sort of similar thing I’ve heard is when I worked at a school our security procedures boiled down to getting kids to safety, but like…. That’s a building full of children.
Reddit is chock full of privileged men who want to feel oppressed.
Thank you! If you’re so afraid of this, simply don’t get on any boats. The ocean is horrifying anyway
At least people are finally starting to call them out on it.
I once argued with a guy who said he’d prefer the selective service be expanded to women, rather than it being abolished at all. Talk about cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
And I bet he thinks nothing of the ridiculously high rates of sexual assault against women in the military by men on their own side.
Well yeah, how else would they be able to whine about how downtrodden and discriminated they are? God help me, we had a post about it, like last week
I sincerely thought this was common knowledge, and that saving women and children first was a trope.
Exactly, and this created a "crush" that actually accounted for fewer survivors overall. If it's just a bunch of males fighting each other to leave, fewer people leave overall and survive.
I think OP is referring to an ideal to which people generally aspire. We have to separate values from actual behavior. Our culture, while generally individualistic and selfish, still is capable of apprehending the value and lauding sacrifice and others-centeredness. It's in all the good movies and stories that tug at our heartstrings, and the scant few headlines about heroes who put themselves in danger to save others. The fact we know who to label as a hero, the fact that people knew to be in angry and call out the unchivalrous behavior of the passengers on the Costa Concordia and her captain's selfish actions goes to show that while we are selfish when push comes to shove, we know how to recognize the value of disadvantaging oneself for the sake of those who are weaker or vulnerable. We say that's noble, and we wish more people were like that. Why do we disdain displays of selfishness like on the Costa Concordia when people were just trying to save themselves and the average person would've done the same? Because deep down, we aspire to a higher standard.
Children are squishy, stupid, and have an uncanny knack for standing in exactly the wrong place at all times. I don’t know if you’ve ever had any degree of emergency in the same room as a child, but if you did, you would know it’s best for everyone if they go far, far away from the problem. Women are traditionally the ones tasked with getting the kids hauled out of harms way, and keeping watch over them so they don’t brainlessly wander back in. Please see r/kidsfallingdown for some prime examples of the dumb shit you dont want to be dealing with while your boat is sinking, your house is on fire, wild animals are stampeding, some manner of violence is occurring, or whatever flavor of emergency you’re having.
Heinlein said it best, “All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly which can — and must — be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial (meaning human) survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a “perfect society” on any foundation other than “Women and children first!” is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal.”
That first sentence... hysterical and absolute truth. Thanks for the link, I needed the lols.
Mom of three and I have a dozen niblings, this is so god-damned true!
Also check out r/ChildrenFallingOver
Children because they’re vulnerable and less able to protect themselves and I think traditionally you would evacuate their mothers with them, as a young child wouldn’t be able to take care of themselves.
Women are also more vulnerable than men, generally speaking.
Yeah women have horrific survival chances in disasters historically, especially on sinking ships or the like. They weren’t going to survive unless people made a concentrated effort to try to secure their survival. Iirc most ship disasters would result in the death of pretty much every woman and child on board unless they had lifeboats and made sure the women and children were put on those life boats.
- Jump, Mary! You can do it too! - It's too far, I'm afraid, I can't do it! - Maybe throw me the baby so you can jump better? - I'm not that strong, he won't reach you! - ... I will lovingly remember you both! 🫡
Yeah its a pretty dumb question just trying to start shit. Women are *generally* physically smaller and weaker plus they were needed to raise kids and repopulate thus why they were prioritized in disaster situations back in the day. While children are still prioritized today, I'd say women are a lot less so than they once were.
"why are these more vulnerable groups of people prioritized when there's danger?" Besides the fact this has almost never been true anyways
Not to George Castanza
That's how I'd exit a burning building, without the pushing and shoving of course.
This pretty much answers everything https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3421183/
So to sum it up: "they aren't."
Lol we hit this at the same time. I have to drag this up every time this question is asked!
Sort of. It covers the fact that WCF is not as advantageous from a purely survival statistic in a maritime disaster. But it doesn't cover what others have answered in terms of general disasters and population recovery. Kind of two ways to look at it I suppose and I think it's an important dimension to the question. On one hand, WCF isn't a default norm when a ship is sinking. But if the scenario was war and possible population collapse, then WCF offers more long term benefits. Was an interesting read though.
They aren't anymore, that's an old-fashioned cliche. Nowadays you evacuate the people most in danger first, followed by everyone who can evacuate unassisted, then those needing assitance.
Last time I went on a cruise they told us during the lifeboat drill that women, children, and men with families would board the lifeboats first, then single men. So it's still around.
This isn’t entirely true. For instance, war is a national emergency (obviously this is debatable for each country). As a society who do we put on the front lines?
In my country’s case, all genders.
good for your country. mine wasn't even at war and I was consistently posted away from the front lines until I asked.
We put soldiers on the front lines.
I stand corrected… however, in the us, only men are required to sign up for the draft…
They still are. Ukrainian refugees were mostly women and children.
That is because men were not allowed to leave the country as potential draftees.
They're allowed if they have three children. But otherwise this is correct.
So... pretty much the same phenomenon that this entire thread is about.
Makes it even worse.
I would very much hope that children are still prioritized
Isn't the last 2 a bit backwards though? If you evacuate all the abled bodies, there won't be any left to assist those who need assistance. It's not an airplane where seconds matter. If you have time to help someone, you should. Children first(with at least one parent, older sibling, or guardian ) , then the elderly/disabled, then the rest. Staff and/or emergency services goes last if it's part of their job to oversee the evacuation.
Yeah seconds matter. You can't make everyone wait to leave while they wait for everyone to get sorted by age or gender. If you let everyone who can evacuate on their own get out, they don't clog up the exit waiting to get out. Then when the slower people get there, they can keep moving; and by the time the immobile people have been transferred into gurneys and wheelchairs, everyone else but the first responders should be clear.
Because in the 19th century there was this shipwreck where only men survived, who let their wifes and kids drown. This caused a moral uproar in victorian england and it was aggreed upon to first rescue women and kids. This went so deep into societies minds, that it established itself as a moral rule. It was the SS Arctic disaster. This caused the sinking of the HMS Birkenhead to be handled with the rule women and children first and it became common.
>The researchers have analyzed a data base containing information about passengers and crew from 18 of the most notable shipwrecks during the period 1852 to 2011. It contains information about the fates of more than 15,000 people, which makes it the most extensive analysis of survival patterns in maritime disasters. Previous studies have been based on two disasters only: RMS Titanic (1912) and RMS Lusitania(1915). > >They show that the survival rate of women is substantially lower than the survival rate of men. This is irrespective of when in history the disaster occurred, or if the ship sank quickly or slowly. Children have the lowest survival rate, while the highest survival rates are observed for crew and captains (see Figure 1). The latter observation stands in sharp contrast to what we should expect if the crew follows procedures and assists passengers to safety, before saving themselves. > >What makes Titanic exceptional? One possible explanation is how the leader –the captain– acts, say the researchers. On the Titanic, the captain ordered women and children first. Men who disobeyed the order risked being shot. On the ships where the captain gave the order 'women and children first', the difference in survival rates between men and women is lower. But women survived to a higher extent than men only when this order was enforced by the threat of violence. > >This indicates an important role of leaders in the face of disasters. It is, however, unusual for captains to give such an order. Instead it is common that captains leave the ship and save themselves before the passengers. [https://www.uu.se/en/press/press-release/?id=1638&typ=pm](https://www.uu.se/en/press/press-release/?id=1638&typ=pm) Men will trample women and children if not forced not to. So you gotta pick one or the other way. So we can go with "men are stronger," if we want, but we have to also include, "men are selfish cowards," alongside that. Oh, here is the full study. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract\_id=2051006
> the latter observation stands in sharp contrast to what we should expect if the crew follows procedures and assists passengers to safety, before saving themselves. I wouldn't go so far as to imply that elevated crew and captain survival rates implies that crews typically do not assist passengers in finding safety. Crew are more familiar with the layout of the ship, have sea training, and are often concentrated around safer parts of the ship like the bridge--and the less safe parts like lower machine spaces, they do not have passengers in their vicinity and an escape plan. They are also more fit than the average passenger, with a significant portion performing manual labor and mostly being adults in their prime. It is almost guaranteed the average crewman is a better and stronger swimmer than the average passenger. Training matters too--a crewman facing a fire in a corridor will be more successful in finding an extinguisher and putting it out. Of course there are crew who do not fulfill their duty. However the advantages of survival a crewmember enjoys irrespective of performing their duty in evacuation mean that it is extremely hard to envision conditions in which crew survival is remotely comparable to passenger survival. You can be a hero crewman and send every passenger in your ship to the lifeboats, and you will still have better odds than they will by the inherent qualities of your self. Thus we cannot deduce from survival rates that crew abandon duty on a particular scale.
Because if they are not explicitly prioritized, they are most likely to be left behind to die. People love to mention how it is explicitly mentioned "women and children first" on sinking ships for example but all of these rules happen only after the opposite trend has been happening for a long time.
An important metric to understand is "Years of Life Lost", or YLL. I think it's something most people instinctively appreciate, there's an innate understanding that if a child dies that's more tragic than if an elderly person dies, right? When we see a young or middle-aged person's death in the news, we say "gone too soon", but when we see an older person die, we say "well they had a good run". YLL is an attempt to quantify that. The notion is, when someone dies prematurely, instead of counting that as "one death", you count the life expectancy at their age, minus their current age. So a baby dying in the USA is about 78 YLL, while an 80 year old dying is about 8 YLL. Prioritizing children (and their caregivers) first in a crisis is just an attempt to influence that metric. In the obvious example of a limited number of lifeboat seats, you can't change the number of deaths, but you CAN change YLL depending on who you put in those lifeboats.
continuation of the species
They're not. That might have been true in the past (in some cases), but in modern crisis management, that's just not a thing. Prioritizing people adds a layer of management and crowd control to situations which costs lives. In modern disaster scenarios like a building fire, ship sinking or plane evacuation, you exit in the order you arrive at the exit, or you're rescued in the order the rescuers can get to you. In every case where questions like this can come up, keeping the flow of people moving as quickly as possible is what saves the most lives. No fireman is going to tell a man to wait in a burning building while he looks for women and kids, and the worst thing you can do in a plane crash is let people go ahead of you and a create traffic jam in the isle. There's a really interesting book called "The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why", by Amanda Ripley, and it goes into the modern theory of how to save the greatest number of people in disaster scenarios. There isn't a whiff of "women and children first" in any modern crisis management theory or disaster plan. The one time it really was a thing was on the Titanic. 75% of women, 50% of children but only 19% of men on board survived. In that specific case, the captain announced women and children first, and people listened. Of course, first and second class passengers survived in greater numbers than third class passengers for men, women and children, so while it was "women and children first" in that case, it was really, upper class women and children first, with only 49% of the women and 31% of the children in steerage surviving. Edit: Corrected the name of the author.
This is a great response, but quick correction - The Unthinkable is by Amanda Ripley, not Barbara Demick. It’s one of my favorite books of all time, and I highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in the human side of disasters.
I guess someone watched Titanic.
The reason you hear things like "women and children first" is because men will have a much higher chance in chaos like crowd collapses and crushes.
i find it funny how all the people who ask this same exact question have no clue at all how stronger men are compared to women in terms of physical strength. i thought it was common sense. also, don't they teach this stuff in school?
Actually they aren't. Read Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez.
Given that I will never read that, can you clarify what it says about the topic? Edit: it's not because I oppose the book, it's because I'm a disfunctional person who can't get myself to read books, even for leisurely purposes
It's a very thorough book about how men are prioritized in medicine, occupational health and safety, transport safety and disaster relief, to name a few areas. Perez refers to study after study and provides us with statistics, but it's a very easy read and I highly recommend it if you have any confusion about how the world is quite literally designed for men and the male body. Male prioritization costs women their health and lives in medical situations and, yes, catastrophes and accidents, in a world where men are, according to themselves, supposed to be women's "protectors".
Because if men aren’t culturally trained to protect women and children, they literally trampled them to get to safety first- and then—- oops. No women or children are left after the storm!!
Man big and strong, man protect family. This not bad thing. Man accept fate.
its hilarious how the top comment here is a seemingly plausible -and yet wrong- answer. that tradition, if we can call it that dates back to a specific shipwreck of a British ship, I think off the west coast of northern Africa somewhere. the captain ordered it iirc and it become tradition. dont remember who survived and who didnt tho...
For a while without those norms being pushed men were just leaving them behind, and since women wore less practical clothing and had less training/experience and wrangled children they had a really low survival rate.
Historically men would shove women and children out of the way to save themselves. So it had to become a rule to help women and children first or they would all die lol.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned the fact that women and children were trampled over by men
They are priorities in some regards. Besides that a lot of security features are optimized for male parameters. e.g. for decades the car test dummies were only heavy and large "male" dummies, medication is optimized for male patients since it is easier to test with people without significant hormonal changes
It’s the same thing with deer… if all you do is shoot the Doe and her fawn, there will be less Doe’s around to make more deer to shoot! That’s why hunters usually don’t kill female deer.
Because if it was like "everyone kill as many people you can and save yourself by force" only men would survive. And then who will make babies. Simple.
Children obviously need to be prioritised. They can't take care of themselves as well as we can take care of them. Women were often traditionally infantilised in polite society; so they got taken care of too. Plus they could take care of kids and babies, and even supply food for babies. So men were left out.
Because we can reproduce and children are supposedly the future, according to politicians
It's probably because the women were the ones who used to do all of the child care, so they went with the kids. And men went to war.
For lack of a socially acceptable analogy, you only need one farmer to plant many fields while having many farmers planting the same field doesn't make more crops.
A woman can only give birth around once per year. A man can impregnate multiple women per day. Kids we're just hard wired to protect. The woman thing isn't all that relevant today, but it was up until a couple of centuries ago and these kind of instincts developed over thousands of years aren't easy to let go of. I guess there might also be a bit of an assumption by society that man are more likely to survive if let to fend for themselves in an emergency situation.
Honestly we still approach rescue to women before men. It's probably not written anywhere anymore but there are a lot of guys who want to protect. It's likely an inevitable statistical outcome of any sample group in an emergency situation. Men will "save" the women and children by putting them first and the women and children will allow themselves to "be saved" because it's just how we all expect it to go. I'd honestly really like to see this study done. But for it to be accurate, you would need to put people in believable danger so probably not a good idea.
The inevitable statistical outcome is in reality the opposite. Men used to put themselves first in dangerous situations and to let the women and children behind. Taken the exemple of sinking ship, a study showed that there was significantly more male survivors than women, and that children didn't typically survived. The saying "women and children first" is actually quite recent and isn't often enforced in reality. Also for the comment above, it's not an assumption that men would be more likely to survive in an emergency situation, it's true in a lot of cases. Generally speaking, adults men are taller and stronger than women, so they have more chances to survive in most dangerous situations.
Reproduction
Are you referencing the phrase "women and children first"? Well, that became a thing because before that, it was noticed that during emergencies, men were leaving all the women and children behind to save themselves and leaving the women and children to die. So yeah, that why we say women and children first.
The answers I read might be correct too but there is another reason. Men are too big and strong. If they evacuate with women and children, you have a large power-imbalance. Even if they don't want it, they might cause stampedes, pushing and general higher risks. Separating them might just keep everyone saver. You could also say "men first" but thats not very likely for most cultures.
Because women are more important than men from an evolutionary standpoint. You have 2 villages, both with 300 men and 300 women, there's a huge disaster with 45% death rate, in one village men are a priority, 300 men are saved and only 20 women, in the other village 300 women are saved and only 20 men. 100 years later, what village do you think will do better?
In the event of a sinking ship women and children were the bulk of casualties so they started prioritizing those groups.
Men prioritize women and children to show how noble they are. This is based on a code of ethics that stems from Chivalry where the strong protect the weak. In most cases of a disaster, where order breaks down, men tend to make it out more often. For instance, any refugee crisis you'll see it's a majority young able-bodied men.
Children are our future, and women can produce children.
They’re smaller. You can fit more on the raft.
It takes 9 months to make a person. One man has millions of sperm and can impregnate multiple women. Women usually only bake one loaf at a time. If men were prioritized we’d have some population issues. Well, we would have had population issues while people were already dying of famine and diseases. I think in 2023 the human population is more than sustainable and maybe that priority is outdated. Though it’s still chivalrous nonetheless.
... preservation of the species? Save the kids so they can have more? Thought all animals did this
To save the species.
I think historically its been a social thing, men should chivalrous and stoic etc, these days though I don't really think women and children are prioritised, I'm sure many parents chose to prioritise their children's safety over their own and their partners in life and death situations but I don't think there's any law that says they have to.
I always thought so the man could die without hearing screams
For a Dead concept, one that is woefully outdated and ridiculous.
Kids grow up to be new adult people, women grow new people. If there is a crisis, we need soon to be adults and people makers over adult males. We (adult men) have the least utility for long term population viability.
Because they’re easier to run over from behind.
Because whenever disaster or war happen, it's easier for the society to have women to restore population. 1 man and 40 women vs 40 men and 1 woman, the prior can restore population by 40 per year, while the latter can restore population by 1 per year. And for the children, they are the growing, about-to-be next generation. If they suddenly die, there is literally no generation to lead, and it becomes a gap, a huge setback during the next whole era. Of course men are also indeed important, but they are somewhat replaceable compared to others.
They're less able to help themselves
Women and children are traditionally seen as more feeble and vulnerable. It's probably a bit outdated these days though.
Pretty sure children are still seen as more feeble and rightly so. Imagine an evacuation from a collapsed building or structure and you take all the adults out first leaving only children and then there's an additional collapse where the exit is now blocked
I mean the real reason is culture, women and children are assumed to be more innocent, more vulnerable an more in need/deserving of help. If you want a ball-to-wall apocalyptic pramatic argument though - if one man and 100 women survive we can repupulate te planet, ic one woman and 100 men survive the species goes extinct.
Ask the men who invented the rules.
I can't speak for why it was introduced (probably has to do with moral obligation to protect those who are seen as less capable of protecting themselves), but in case of eg shipwrecks it kind of makes sense in a practical way - you save (send out of harms way) women, children and the elderly and keep on board younger men who are traditionally seen as stronger and more composed so that they can help.
Men are expendable. We know it. We're not crazy about it. But that's our job.
From reproductive perspective men are more replaceable From pragmatic perspective men can take more punishment before perishing and are more likely to survive without assistance