There’s no better way to start this one off than with a quote from the beloved Robert A. Heinlein: Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. Capable of inspiring poetry or starting a war without so much as a flick of their wrists, women, we can all agree, are maddeningly complex creatures. We bring you 18 interesting (and fun) facts about women that will probably give you better insight into the female psyche.

Note: None of these are meant to be generalized to the entirety of the female population. Don’t lynch us, please. Stay cool like Fonzie here, okay? 😉

1 The average amount of time a woman can keep a secret is 47 hours and 15 minutes.

Two days. A Wines of Chile commissioned study surveyed 3000 women between the ages of 18 and 65 and discovered that four in ten women could not keep a secret. No matter how personal or damage-inducing the secret, more than half of that number admitted that a few glasses of wine could make the process that much easier. The study also concluded that boyfriends, husbands, best friends and mothers as initial recipients of the information were most likely.

UK Director of Wines of Chile, Michael Cox said:

“We were really keen to find out with this survey how many secrets people are told. What we didn’t bank on was  quickly these are passed on by those we confide in. No matter how precious the piece of information, it’s often out in the p

howublic domain within 48 hours. That means every single Brit who has confided in a friend should be worried because they don’t know where their secret is heading.

The average woman hears three pieces of gossip every week and will probably pass it on to at least one more person. Three in ten women are compelled to reveal secrets, two-thirds feel guilty after doing it and only three-quarters claim that they can be fully trusted to keep a secret to themselves. What’s more, more than four in ten women consider it a-okay to share a friend’s secret with someone who does not personally know them. Mr. Cox adds,

“The fact they offload gossip to someone completely unrelated to the matter or in a different social group can be comforting, but while nine in ten girls deem themselves trustworthy – they still have spilt the beans.”

Thankfully, 27% revealed that they didn’t remember what they were told the next day. (source)

2 Women think about their appearance 9 times a day, a UK survey found.

A poll conducted for a shopping channel QVC suggests that British women think about their appearance nine times a day and would not leave the house without putting on a lipstick at the very least. 30% of women admitted that their beauty regime is the last thing on their minds before they hit the sack and 16% say it is the first thing they think about when they wake up.

The survey found that more than a third of the women said that their only worry was looking good for other women than impressing men. For that percentage, their preoccupation with cosmetics could be about boosting their own confidence rather than vanity. Interestingly, women in the north-west of the country think about their appearance at least once an hour, which is more than any other region. (source)

3 Women spend nearly one year of their lives deciding what to wear.

A recent study by Matalan found that women spend an average of 15 minutes every morning deciding what to wear. After compiling the results from polling 2,491 women, they concluded that the average woman spends 287 days on this activity. On weeknights, it increases to 20 minutes and 52 minutes for planning a holiday wardrobe.  The study also discovered that women will try on two outfits each morning before arriving at a final decision. (source)

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4 Women speak about 20,000 words a day. That’s 13,000 more than the average man.

A recent study conducted by researchers from the U.S. suggests that women are more talkative due to the presence of higher levels of a certain protein in the brain. Foxp2, also known as the ‘language protein’, causes females to be chattier. In a lab trial on rats, it was found that this protein was dominant in male rats, not in females.

Researcher Margaret McCarthy says:

“Based on our observations, we postulate higher levels of Foxp2 in girls and higher levels of Foxp2 in male rats is an indication that Foxp2 protein levels are associated with the more communicative sex.”

Previous studies have also shown that the love of small talk and chit-chat begins at a significantly younger age for females. Girls learn to speak more quickly than their male counterparts and utter their first words and sentences much earlier. It has also been observed that girls have larger vocabularies and tend to use a greater variety of sentences than boys of the same age. (source)

5 It is legal for a woman to be topless in public in New York, as long as it’s not for business purposes.

With #FreeTheNipple going viral on Twitter and Scout Willis recently posting shirtless photos of herself on NYC’s sidewalks, the issue of double-standard with women’s bodies and nudity has gained a powerful voice. New York City, for example, is well-appreciated for its “topless freedom”, albeit with some restrictions.

Police officers can still arrest citizens for behaving in a disorderly fashion, but they cannot do the same for women who go shirtless in locations where it is acceptable for men to do the same. As of now, more than fifteen states in the U.S. advocate some degree of “toplessness equality.” (source)

6 Short female drivers that sit close to the steering wheel are the most likely to be killed by an airbag.

A study conducted by the Vehicle Safety Research Centre of Loughborough University in the UK found that shorter women are more susceptible to interaction with the airbag as it deploys. Drivers less than 160 cm (5 feet 2 inches) in height (and that means women and men) have a significantly higher probability of severe pelvis and lower extremity injury. (source)

7 Women cry on average between 30 and 64 times a year while Men cry between 6 and 17 times.

The German Society of Ophthalmology concludes that women cry on an average for about six minutes, while men tend towards two to four minutes. After collating several studies on crying, they discovered that crying turns to sobbing in 65% of cases for women, compared to only 6% for men. No difference between the sexes was found, however, until the period of adolescence. (source)

8 The average woman in the UK owns 19 pairs of shoes but wears only 7.

A survey commissioned by the Diamond insurance company found that two-thirds of the average woman’s show stash never sees the light of day. One in 20 also admitted to owning more than 50 pairs of shoes, 10% saying that they buy at least 10 pairs of shoes every year.

Diamond insurance company’s spokesperson Natalie Grimshare said:

“According to our study, the average woman owns twice as many shoes as her partner. For some women their shoe spending habits have even caused arguments. As many as one in eight of the women we questioned told us they’ve argued with their partner either about the amount they spend on shoes or the sheer number of pairs they own.”

All for the love of Louboutins. (source)

9 Worldwide, women earn US$18 trillion but spend US$28 trillion.

An article published by the Harvard Business Review presents these statistics:

Women make the decision in the purchases of 94% of home furnishings, 92% of vacations, 91% of homes, 60% of automobiles, 51% of consumer electronics.

Combined with the money spent on the multi-trillion dollar beauty industry worldwide, women are spending much more than they can afford to. Wage disparities, societal pressures and the ever-increasing cost of living pretty much guarantees that. Women may be ruling the world economy right now, but that title betrays a darker reality that most fail to see. (source)

10 An average woman in the UK will own 111 handbags in her lifetime.

Researchers have found that the average 30-year-old woman owns 21 handbags and buys a new one every three months. That is around 111 bags over the course of a lifetime, totaling up to £8,000 spent. 5% of the 1,500 women that were surveyed even admitted to owning more than 100 handbags at the time. An average bag costs £76, with prices skyrocketing for more premium brands.

Angela Poplett, a shopper at Lakeside, Essex (who commissioned the study), said:

“Often women buy a new handbag to suit a certain outfit and don’t want to throw it away after just one use so keep hold of it to use again one day. Maggie Thatcher started the trend with her love for handbags and today’s celebrities such as Sienna Miller, Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie have followed in her footsteps – so much so that I like to call this handbag obsession ‘Sienna Miller Syndrome’.” (source)

11 Over 80% of women wear the wrong bra size.

Don’t we all ladies know the struggle. Research shows that women with larger breasts tend to buy bras that are too small for them, while smaller-breasted women do the opposite. The culprit is mainly the annoyingly varied manufacturing standards. This makes finding that perfect bra a Herculean task.

Because of this, women stick with one kind of bra that appears to fit, through any weight gain or loss. In a UK survey, 99% of over 2,000 women between the ages of 16 to 75 who had a bra fitting said that fit was the least important factor when picking a bra. (source)

12 Shorter women have shorter pregnancies, a study found.

A group of researchers led by Louis Muglia studied 3,500 mothers and their babies in Finland, Denmark and Norway. The data suggested that shorter mothers had shorter pregnancies. Smaller babies too had a higher risk for preterm births. Muglia said,

“Our study suggests it is the mom’s height itself that is helping to determine the length of gestation. It’s part of the equation.”

Every 1-centimeter increase in height equalled to about 0.4 days in gestation. This might sound like a small number, but statistically, its significance is unparalleled. The paper, published in the PLOS Medicine journal, attempted to combat the issue of preterm birth that affects babies in the millions every year. (source)

13 The smell of women’s tears will reduce men’s sexual arousal and testosterone levels.

In a study led by Noam Sobel, a neurobiologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, researchers found that the smell of women’s tears does not necessarily elicit empathy in the opposite sex. Rather, it causes a drop in their levels of testosterone and reduces their sexual arousal.

Sobel suggested that this is because bodily fluids – tears, sweat etc. – contain pheromones; compounds that send little messages about a person’s moods, sexual orientation and genetic makeup. (source)

14 A book titled ‘Everything Men Know About Women’ has over 100 blank pages.

YES, this actually exists. Psychologist Dr. Alan Francis’s book excerpt reads,

“In a little more than 100 pages, Dr. Alan Francis distills years of research and thousands of interviews to reveal the most comprehensive understanding of men’s knowledge and understanding of the opposite sex.”

Meant to be a gag or a serious work of art, Dr. Francis sure knows the futility of trying to dissect a woman’s mind. (source)

15 To avoid facial wrinkles, a woman claims to have not smiled or laughed for 40 years, even after the birth of her daughter.

U.K. resident Tess Christian explains that she trained herself at a young age to not laugh or smile, so she could preserve her good looks. She says in an interview with Daily Mail,

“Yes, I am vain and want to remain youthful.My strategy is more natural than Botox and more effective than any expensive beauty cream or facial.”

Christian claims that she lives a rather happy, fulfilling life despite never having smiled in over 40 years. Her friends call her Mona Lisa, after Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting. (source)

16 Women are better multitaskers than men.

To test the claim that women are naturally better at multitasking than men, psychologists at the University of Hertfordshire, the University of Glasgow and the University of Leeds pitted men against women in two experiments. According to the results, women were more adept at switching between tasks than men.

The study also suggested that women are better at real-life multitasking as well. As written in the journal BMC Psychology,

“Men and women did not differ significantly at solving simple arithmetic problems, searching for restaurants on a map, or answering general knowledge questions on the phone, but women were significantly better at devising strategies for locating a lost key.”

However, the team warns against making generalizations. Professor of Psychology Arthur Markman says in an interview with LiveScience,

“There’s a small number of people who are decent multitaskers — this concept of a ‘supertasker’ — but at best, it’s maybe 10 percent of the population, so chances are, you’re not one of them. The research out there will tell you that there are a couple of people who are good at it, but it’s probably not you.” (source)

17 Women who play video games tend to have more sex and be happier with their relationships than those who don’t.

A survey conducted by HarrisInteractive studied the lifestyle and habits of female gamers. The data suggested that women who play games online claim to have sex more often and engage in happier relationships than those who don’t. (source)

18 Women live longer than men partly because of their immune systems age more slowly.

Prof Katsuiku Hirokawa of the Tokyo Medical and Dental University tells BBC News,

“Our findings indicate that the slower rate of decline in these immunological parameters in women than that in men is consistent with the fact that women live longer than do men.”

Hirokawa and his colleagues analysed blood samples from 356 healthy men and women between the ages of 20 and 90. As they report in the Immunity & Ageing journal, men’s higher susceptibility to disease shortens their lifespans due to the weakening of the body’s defences over time. (source)

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