The Long of It
Through the years, there has always been a rivalry or battle between the sexes. You can see it everywhere:’ classes, sports competitions and televisions shows. And the other day, it was right in front of my face (and about a hundred other faces) at a bar.

The battle was exactly that ‘- a verbal battle between one of those couples I could only explain as the epitome of Dane Cook’s ‘relationshits.’ You could just tell they were well-versed in fighting with one another.

While I am not completely certain on all the details of the fight, I know each party was debating about whether or not they were indeed the superior sex. Intelligence and strength seemed to be the hot button issues.

Since neither party had any factual basis for their argument (besides their partner’s many faults), I decided I would take their public display of in-affection for each other to the next level and find out if there was really a victor in this battle of the sexes. I also decided to make intelligence and strength my main focus.

The issue of strength seemed clear cut:’ Men win.

According to the journal ‘The Physician and Sportsmedicine,’ women have about two-thirds the strength of men.’ One reason for this difference is that, on average, women have about one-tenth the testosterone of men.’ And testosterone is basically the most important hormone for strength development, according to the journal.

Testosterone also causes men to be more aggressive and more competitive than women, according to WebMD. Both of these qualities help men when it comes to developing physical strength.

The issue of intelligence wasn’t as straightforward. Scientific studies couldn’t seem to agree with each other. There were a few common threads, however, throughout a variety of studies.

Most of the gender studies I found on the Internet agreed that men, on average, were more apt in the fields of science and math, while women excelled in language and communications.’ But with each gender having its own niche, I went beyond subjects and went straight to the hardware:’ the brain.

Women, on average, have better networked brains, giving them the ability to activate both the left and right side of the brain simultaneously, according to an Economic Times article by Mark Ritson titled, ‘Fair Trade:’ Why women are the superior marketing sex.’ In comparison, the male brain is, for the most part, confined to the left hemisphere, and only a small portion of the right.

This superior brain networking usually allows women to understand and solve problems quicker than men, Ritson said. These skills give women the edge in everyday thinking.
So the score is 1-1. Men have the strength, women have the intelligence. Now the question is:’ Is it better to have superior brains or brawns?

When I informally polled 50 students as to whether they would rather be smarter or stronger, 100 percent of the women said smarter, while 67 percent of the men said smarter and 33 percent said stronger.

This unscientific survey not only showed that most people value intelligence more than strength, but the responses finally proved to me that by valuing intelligence more, women, on average, were truly more intelligent.

So while woman may not win every fight in this gender war, they definitely win the battles of Gettysburg proportion.

The Short of It
Men and women will probably never sign a peace treaty to end the battle of the sexes, but men should just smarten up and fly their white flags of surrender.’
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‘- Megan Jicha can be reached at [email protected].