I found this post on TwoXChromosomes:

https://i.imgur.com/L8Elzsd.png

TLDR: girl is pissed because her boyfriend became stronger than her in 8 months when she's been training for 4 years.

She's "in the top 0,2% of women", and yet her regular-guy boyfriend surpasses her in no time and will be much, much stronger than her when he gets to 4 years of training like her.

So I remembered this study about strength differences between men and women by the USA National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/nhanes2011-2012/overview_g.htm

Here is the graph with the data: https://i.imgur.com/D1ljgIo.png

Combined grip strength by age and sex. Combined grip strength is the sum of the largest isometric grip strength readings from each hand, measured using a handgrip dynamometer. Grip strength is an index of upper body strength. Each point is one person. Sample size = 7064.

NHANES is a representative sample of the US non-institutionalized civilian resident population of the United States. It utilizes a complex, multistage, probability sampling design. The sizes of the symbols represent the sampling weights.

The grip strength variables are described here: http://wwwn.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/2011-2012/MGX_G.htm

Controlling for age, height, and weight, the adult female mean is 23.3 kg less than the adult male mean (without controlling for height and weight, the female mean is 33.8 kg less than the male mean). Adult: 18-60.

In these NHANES data, 89% of adult men are stronger than the 89% of adult women.

Grip strength is a decent proxy for upper and lower limb strength, and is also correlated with other indices of strength. Based on other studies, there is a smaller sex difference in lower body strength. Here is the conclusion of one recent study (Bohannon et al. 2012):

The findings of this study suggest that for healthy adults isometric measures of grip and knee extension strength reflect a common underlying construct, that is, limb muscle strength. Nevertheless, differences in activities requiring grip and knee extension strength and the findings of our analysis preclude a blanket advocacy for using either alone to describe the limb muscle strength of tested individuals.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3448119/

According to Pheasant (1983), a review of 112 datasets on sex differences in strength, the female/male ratio of lower limb strength is 66%. In chance encounters between a female and male, the female lower limb strength would be greater 12% of the time.

Male strength varies more than female strength: The standard deviation of adult male strength is 17.1 kg; that of adult female strength is 10.5 kg.

This means not only that men ARE stronger than women, but also that:

  • The average man is almost 2 times stronger than the average woman

  • In order to surpass regular men a woman would have to be 3 times stronger than usual

  • There are more "exceptional men" than "exceptional women": women much stronger than usual are terribly rare but men much stronger than usual are only somewhat rare

  • The strongest man was around 2 times stronger than the strongest woman

  • There are barely any men weaker than regular women and barely any women stronger than regular men

All records in physical excellence are held by men.

Even "transgender women", men who got physically weakened by hormonal therapy, easily trump all the women in their sports categories: wrestling, short-distance running, boxing, volleyball... They are less physically capable than they would be without the hormone treatments and yet they easily surpass all their female competitors.

Thoughts on this topic and how people react to it?