According the feminist narrative, institutions are a tool of the “patriarchy”, and they are out to get women and favor men.

However, in many cases, academia, NGOs and national and international institutions are replete with feminist narratives that are more or less stealthily embedded in what seem to be neutral reports and data. Some organizations openly promote these scientific falsifications: for example, “Equal Measures 2030”, a “fiscally sponsored project by Panorama Global” write in their report “A Gender-Equal Future in Crisis?”

“Data is power. Feminist and gender data continues to disrupt what kind of data and how it is produced, analyzed and used.”

“Power” is to feminism what “Just because” is to toddlers: a supposedly ultimate argument that no one can argue on. Of course, they never define it, or when they do, they often do so with circular definitions.

One of their objectives is to:

“Promote 'data feminism' and close gender sensitive data gaps

Closing gender-sensitive data gaps is vital to monitor policies and inform the decisions of policymakers. But we must go beyond this to also promote ‘data feminism’, recognizing the power imbalances and colonial legacies baked into statistical systems, practices, and institutions.”

I want to show here how this claim that data favor men is just an accusatory inversion. An accusatory inversion is a false accusation whose goal is to project your own responsibilities and misgivings onto others. You accuse others of what you do yourself. Think like when a woman accuses her boyfriend of cheating because she herself cheated or the “stop resisting” of power-tripping cops.

Here is one actual example of how such feminist falsifications have already permeated something like the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Among all their indices to measure the progress in lots of different fields, one is the “life expectancy index” (LEI) which is used in several aggregated indices like the “Human Development Index” or the “Gender development index” (see “Human Development Report 2023/2024 technical notes p.1 for where the LEI index is used)

The LEI is derived from a straightforward statistic: “Life expectancy at birth”. Life expectancy at birth at year X is actually the average age of death of that year. You can split it between males and females. It’s a straightforward stat (although with a debatable name). For example, for 2022, Switzerland has a female life expectancy of 85.9 years, and a male one of 82.5 years. (All these stats can be downloaded from the UN website at https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/documentation-and-downloads)

However, the life expectancy INDEX is not calculated the same for men and women. You can see this clearly since the UN is kind enough to give you an example Excel file to play with (see “Calculating the indices” from the page above). The formula shows that for the LEI to reach the maximum of 1 for men, it needs a male life expectancy of 82.5 years but it needs 87.5 years for women. Five more years. Why? This is the rabbit hole I am going to show you here.

The 5 years difference of maximum life expectancy between males and females in building the LEI index is justified by a paper of the UN:

Sen A, Anand S. Gender Inequality in Human Development: Theories and Measurement. In: Background Papers: Human Development Report 1995. New York: United Nations Development Programme ; 1996. pp. 1-20. which states:

So far the analysis has been confined to achievements in which the "potentials" of women and men do not differ (for example, each group has the same range of achievable literacy, from 0 to 100 percent). The situation is different, however, when it comes to mortality rates and life expectancy (as was mentioned earlier). Given the evidence of biological differences in survival rates favouring women *(with comparable care),*10 we are forced to address the question of the appropriate comparable scales of achievement of life expectancy respectively for women and men. And we have to integrate that differential scaling into the general evaluative scheme of gender-equity-sensitive indexes.

Footnote 10 says:

10. There is indeed strong evidence that the maximal potential life expectancy for women is greater than for men -- given similar care, including health care and nutritional opportunities (see Holden 1987, Waldron 1983, and the references cited there). Indeed, in most of the "developed" countries, women tend to outlive men by typically six to eight years.

So in short, the LEI exists as it is with its 5 years difference because Sen A, Anand S. (1996) in justify it so by using three sources:

1.      Anand and Sen (1993) ([PDF] Human Development Index: Methodology and Measurement. S Anand, A Sen – 1994 on Google Scholar)

2.      Holden, C. (1987). Why do women live longer than men?. Science, 238(4824), 158–160. doi:10.1126/science.3659906 

3.      Ingrid Waldron. (1983). Sex differences in human mortality: The role of genetic factors. , 17(6), 321–333. doi:10.1016/0277-9536(83)90234-4

Let’s see these in order.

1.  The first one was obviously just some internal workpaper and was not published (it’s a mimeograph) yet it can be found on Google scholar. In which, our authors (the same as the one of the foundational one on which the LEI was built) wrote:

For fixing the separate goalposts of life expectancy for females and males over the period in question (from around 1960 to around 2050), the minimum and maximum average levels of life expectancy are taken to be 37.5 and 87.5 years for women, and 35.5 and 82.5 years for men. Thus the life expectancy range is 50 years for both women and men; this implies that a unit increase in longevity for either sex (over time) will contribute the same increment to the overall HDI. This procedure is in keeping with a "distributive concept" in which, as Aristotle argued, "people should do the best in so far as their circumstances admit". (note 20)

 Note 20: Reference to Aristotle, Politics, VII.I Or better reference.

That’s it. A mathematical expedient (50 years lifespan to allow increase to have the same impact on both genders’ index) and a rhetorical trick based on a vague reference of Aristotle. So why 5 years? Well fuck off, it’s convenient and it won’t go against the a priori that women are always at a disadvantage.

Let’s see the other references:

2.  Holden (1987) is just a short conference report published in Science magazine in 1987. It states the following:

Although epidemiological studies have provided a wealth of information on relative morbidity and mortality between the sexes, the cause of the differences are poorly understood. (…)
Constance Nathanson of the Johns Hopkings School of Public Health pointed out that the longevity gap is more pronounced among blue-collar people than among college-educated, presumably because blue collar men have worse health habits, such as smoking. The gap is as much a product of social class of gender” she said.

Some biology-related behavioral data were offered at the meeting, but there were no findings bearing directly on the gender gap.

 Yep, this a source used to support the fact that there is an innate biological longevity gap favoring women… You read that right...

 

3. For Waldron (1983), her conclusion is:

It has thus far not been possible to estimate quantitatively the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors to sex differences in total mortality. This difficulty is due both to the importance and complexity of the interactions between genetic and environmental factors and also to the limitation of current information. In conclusion, current evidence indicates that sex differences in human mortality reflect the interactions effects of a considerable variety of genetic and environmental factors.

 This supposedly proves that there is a genetic factor causing a 5 years longevity gap…

 This people, is how the clown academics work. And all these UN and NGO reports are based on such drivel. Women supposedly live 5 years longer… “just because” as toddlers say. Feminist science at its best: just bury the premise so we can continue our narrative that women are oppressed and that's why they live longer, just like the upper class is oppressed by the working class and that's why the upper class live longer. An accusatory inversion: call people out on something you do yourself in order to hide the fact that you are doing it.

For info, in most highly developed countries like Switzerland, the gap is actually LESS than 5 years. And because of that, this means that the women’s Life Expectancy Index is LOWER than that of men despite them dying younger. Men die younger, women most affected.