Women and stress

Women and stress

A US study by Professor Shelley Taylor has found that women cope with stress better than men because of their female hormones.
Professor Taylor believes that in history women often didn't have the option to fight or flee because they were frequently pregnant or encumbered by small children.
Instead, women developed a more suitable strategy, which was to 'tend and befriend'. So a woman would look after children and do what she could to keep them safe, but she would also enlist help from a female friend.
The key to this behaviour was, and is, a female hormone called oxytocin. Professor Taylor's team believe it is this difference that accounts for women seeking out other women to talk to when the going gets tough.
Whether or not you go along with all of this, far more women than men discuss their stresses with a friend.
However, there are an awful lot of women who are incapacitated by severe stress and who are suffering exactly the same sort of stress-related symptoms that we see in men.