An experiment was conducted where researchers asked participants if they’d rather sacrifice the life of a male bystander or female bystander for the greater good. 88% chose to sacrifice the male bystander, with the participant’s gender having no significant impact on this decision (2-3/10).

“Moral Chivalry: Gender and Harm Sensitivity Predict Costly Altruism” (2016) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1948550616647448?download=true (10 pages)

Co-author Dean Mobbs, professor of cognitive neuroscience at CalTech (and formerly an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University), was quoted saying, "There is indeed a gender bias in these matters: society perceives harming women as more morally unacceptable”.

A separate study found that people in general are more willing to endorse interventions that cause instrumental harm, or harm in the name of the greater good, to men than they are to women (9/13), with women and feminists endorsing those interventions even more (7-8/13).

“Worth the Risk? Greater Acceptance of Instrumental Harm Befalling Men than Women” (2023) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10022566/pdf/10508_2023_Article_2571.pdf (13 pages)

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10508-023-02571-0.pdf (same study, different link)

Co-author Tania Reynolds, an assistant professor at the the University of New Mexico, provided her thoughts on why feminists more readily endorsed IH against men, saying, “Perhaps people who identify as feminists or egalitarians perceive men to have benefited throughout history, and therefore they now evaluate it as fair if men suffer and women gain an advantage”.

One of the major explanations for why we’re more sensitive to harm befalling women is Moral Typecasting Theory where we instinctively stereotype men as agentic perpetrators of harm and women as passive victims of harm. Participants in the following study (n = 3,137) found the issues faced by female victims to be more compelling than those exact same issues faced by male victims while judging more harshly those who victimized women than those who victimized men (15/22).

“Man up and take it: Gender bias in moral typecasting” (2020) https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tania-Reynolds/publication/342642686_Man_up_and_take_it_Gender_bias_in_moral_typecasting/links/5f46bfa5a6fdcc14c5c755e6/Man-up-and-take-it-Gender-bias-in-moral-typecasting.pdf (22 pages)

Same study, different link: https://iswmatters.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Reynoldsetal2020-GenderBiasMoralTypecasting.pdf

These findings were replicated with a sample of children (3/8).

Grigoreva, A. D., & Tasimi, A. (2025). Children’s gendered expectations of moral parties. Scientific Reports, 15(1). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-94375-6.pdf (8 pages)

Other explanations can be found here:

The womb is the limiting factor to reproduction in societies, making women more reproductively valuable, so it made sense for societies to preserve women while treating men as more expendable (2/10). Another reason being that we stereotype men as agentic perpetrators of harm and women as passive (non-agentic) victims of harm (Moral Typecasting), and are thus more sensitive to women’s suffering (3-4/10).

“A feminine advantage in the domain of harm: a review and path forward” (2024) https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article/20/11/20240381/63537/A-feminine-advantage-in-the-domain-of-harm-a (10 pages, PDF inside)

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11557237/pdf/rsbl.2024.0381.pdf (study in pdf form)

A separate paper on why we prioritize women’s survival: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362241567_Societies_also_prioritize_female_survival

This reluctance to expose women to harm was replicated in two back-to-back studies (published in 2021 and 2022), where it was found that both male and female participants respond more positively to female-favoring sex differences in (unbeknownst to them, fabricated) research and less positively to male-favoring sex differences, characterizing the latter as sexist and upsetting (7/23). Both male and female participants incorrectly predicted that men would react more positively to male-favoring research (4,10/23), underestimating how protective men generally are of women, with the study reading: “participants overestimated the extent to which people would be biased in favour of their own sex, with women overestimating men’s ingroup bias more than men overestimated women’s. These findings are consistent with the idea that both sexes are more protective of women than men, but that people tend not to be aware of this” (11/23).

“Reactions to male-favouring versus female- favouring sex differences” (2021) https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steve-Stewart-Williams/publication/343169602_Reactions_to_male-favouring_versus_female-favouring_sex_differences_A_pre-registered_experiment_and_Southeast_Asian_replication/links/60ac500f92851ca9dce1e797/Reactions-to-male-favouring-versus-female-favouring-sex-differences-A-pre-registered-experiment-and-Southeast-Asian-replication.pdf (23 pages)

As with study 1, both male and female participants incorrectly predicted that men would favor male-favoring research over female-favoring research (7/12). As hypothesized by the authors, both men and women preferred the female-favoring research, consistent with the idea that people are more protective of women than men, far more so than they realize (8/12).

“People react more positively to female- than to male-favoring sex differences: A direct replication of a counterintuitive finding” (2022) https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0266171&type=printable (12 pages)

2024 Follow-up: The harm hypothesis: How perceived harm to women shapes reactions to research on sex differences https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38168745/ (couldn’t find a PDF unfortunately)

We can see the results of this bias play out in the real world. Articles attesting to women’s superiority/men’s inferiority by mainstream outlets are abundant while articles pointing at an inverse are scarce/non-existent. This reflects a societal bias where positive generalizations are socially permissible for women and impermissible for men while negative generalizations are socially impermissible for women and permissible for men.

Examples:

Forbes: If Women Are Better Leaders, Then Why Are They Not In Charge?

NPR: “Are Men Idiots Who Do Stupid Things? Study Says Yes”

Time: 'Men Are Idiots', New Study Says

CNBC: Need scientific proof men are stupider? We got that

Forbes: Why Women Are Smarter Than Men

Vice: Men Are Creepy, Study Confirms

HuffPost: Men Are Creepier Than Women, According To Science And Daily Life

Feminist Current: New study confirms that men are, indeed, creepy

Glamour: Why Are Men So Terrible This Summer?

The Week: Men are the worst. Here's how they can be better.

Independent: Why men are crap

Stylist: Science proves that women are stronger than men

Nature: When the going gets tough, women are tougher than men

The Guardian: The weaker sex? Science that shows women are stronger than men

NPR: Is It Sexist To Say That Women Are Superior To Men?

Guardian: Scientists confirm what women always knew: men really are the weaker sex

In a replication of the Milgram experiment, participants were three times more likely to withdraw when a woman was being zapped, irrespective of their own sex. (5/7)

“Would You Deliver an Electric Shock in 2015? Obedience in the Experimental Paradigm Developed by Stanley Milgram in the 50 Years Following the Original Studies” (2017) https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michal-Folwarczny-3/publication/315065066_Would_You_Deliver_an_Electric_Shock_in_2015_Obedience_in_the_Experimental_Paradigm_Developed_by_Stanley_Milgram_in_the_50_Years_Following_the_Original_Studies/links/5c52b77992851c22a39d406d/Would-You-Deliver-an-Electric-Shock-in-2015-Obedience-in-the-Experimental-Paradigm-Developed-by-Stanley-Milgram-in-the-50-Years-Following-the-Original-Studies.pdf (7 pages)

Experimental evidence demonstrates that underperforming women are given better work reviews than equally underperforming men (6-7/13). What’s funny about this study is the emphasis on the harm this bias has on women.

“Gendered White Lies: Women Are Given Inflated Performance Feedback Compared With Men” (2021) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10.1177/0146167220916622 (13 pages)