Reply With QuoteI can't remember where I read it, but did read that in cases where the ship went down quickly, men were more likely to survive, wheras in cases where it took a while women and children 's chances improved. Which would make sense I guess.
"Women and children first" is a myth!
Date: 30 July 2012, LiveScience, IOL Scitech ( I combined the two articles)
Author: Jane J. Lee, LiveScience Contributor
Despite the widespread notion that women and children have a better chance at surviving a shipwreck because they will be saved first, a new study finds that that's just wishful thinking. The captain, crew and male passengers are more likely to survive maritime disasters than women and children, finds a new study by economists at Uppsala University in Sweden. When it comes to abandoning ship, "it appears as if it's every man for himself," said lead researcher Mikael Elinder in a statement.
Elinder and his colleague studied 18 shipwrecks, including the Titanic and Lusitania, from 1852 to 2011 that involved more than 15,000 passengers and more than 30 nationalities. They limited their study to disasters that included information on the s3x of survivors, that involved at least 100 people, and where at least 5 percent survived and 5 percent died. The analysis did not include the Italian cruise ship, Costa Concordia, whose captain came under fire earlier this year for leaving the deadly scene of shipwreck before all 4,200-plus passengers were evacuated. Thirty-two people died.
Their findings run counter to the notion that women and children get priority when escaping a shipwreck. The sinking of the Titanic 100 years ago, where three times more women survived than men, popularized this "unwritten law of the sea," because the captain ordered that women and children went into the lifeboats first. In the case of the Titanic, the captain ordered women and children to be saved first and there were reports of officers shooting at any men who disobeyed the order. Women had a survival advantage over men in just two of the shipwrecks studied, the Titanic in 1912 and the Birkenhead, a British ship that went aground in the Indian Ocean in 1852.
But it turns out that this is the exception rather than the rule. Study co-author Oscar Erixson grew up on stories of chivalrous men on the Titanic who gave their lives for the women and children. "[So] the survival patterns we found [in this study] came as surprise to me," the economist wrote in an email to LiveScience.
In results published online today (July 30) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Erixson and Elinder found that overall, women were about half as likely to survive as men. And they found that crewmembers were about 18.7 percent more likely to survive than passengers, no matter how much time it took a ship to sink.
"The later observation is certainly not what one would expect given that the crew, and the captain in particular, are responsible for evacuating the passengers before putting themselves in safety," Erixson wrote in an email. The researchers also found that women fared the worst on British ships, despite the fact that more "women and children first" orders were given on British ships than on others. “This contrasts with the notion of British men being more gallant than men of other nationalities,” said the study authored by Mikael Elindera and Oscar Erixson of the Department of Economics, Uppsala University, Sweden.
"Although maritime disasters are tragic events, they can contribute to our understanding of how people behave under extreme stress and when it is a matter of life and death," said Elinder in a statement.
Source 1st: http://www.livescience.com/21951-wom...reck-myth.html
Source 2nd: http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science...2#.UBg8oaPAG1c
I can't remember where I read it, but did read that in cases where the ship went down quickly, men were more likely to survive, wheras in cases where it took a while women and children 's chances improved. Which would make sense I guess.
Survival does not equal priority. Just because more men than woman survived does not mean priority was not given to woman and children first.
Sorry I phrased it badly.Originally Posted by Chulo
I would imagine that the dresses etc. of Edwardian era woman would have dragged them to their doom pretty fast if they did end up in the water...
I guess in the study they took into account the factor of survival skills based on the nature of gender. But how do you explain the fact that three times more women survived than men in the sinking of Titanic?? Also most of the crewmembers survived in different accidents, that confirms "every man for himself".
Indeed
Some analyses show that men were more fit to swim longer or to the coast, they more fit to reach safety boats first, were less hindered by kids burden, had less drowning happy clothes and were generally more mentaly organized for survival i.e less prompt to life threatening reactions
A such a male with a jacket and pants throwing himself willingly in the water to float and swim would have more survival probablities than a women with heavy robes that waits the last moment (the moment when the ships capsizes) to go to the bath and who don't know how to swimm well
For the crew members it is easy they knew the evacuation SOPs i;e where were the safety boats, how to reach them, how to have proper orientation in the boat. And they were the once operating the safety boats
The Titanic is an statistical exception (as stated by the study) because of the Captain order, nothing more, nothing less.
Apparently the study is flawed: More On The ‘Women And Children First’ Era
Mainly the people behind the study appear to have conflated various groups in such a way to come to a pre-desired result.
I agree with you and Chulo. Although the confirmation that Titanic is the exception due to captain's order for giving priority to women and children and the fact that the whole study is published in such a good journal it amkes me more sceptical.
Nice link, good comments as well below the article.
Maybe I should run it in SPSS..
Last edited by D-Mitch; 07-31-2012 at 06:01 PM.
That very well may have something to do with it. Up into Victorian times, women wore so many layers of clothing that if they were apt to go in the water, their weight would instantly double and they would sink like a rock, along with the children they would be holding on too.
I thought women and children jumped first so the sharks wouldnt be hungry afterward.
I can see children first but, women? No. As they are equal and competing with men for everything it just seems sexist.
All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and
young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly
which can -- and must -- be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function.
As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible.
Attempting to formulate a "perfect society" on any foundation other than "Women
and children first!" is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal.
Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly --
and no doubt will keep on trying.
-Robert Anson Heinlein
Mnjeh, might have been different back in the day, but I sure as hell arent going to give room to women, after all they're equal these days (dont you dare to say anything different, its sexist). And while many might be daydreaming about doing glorious death, but I think your fear/adrenaline will easily take over at that point, survival and survival.
Posting Permissions
