The statistics of 86 males for 100 women in Russia is well known. The demographics of proportion of men to women (also known as “sex ratio”) has been stable in the country for the last 25 years when the phenomena of Russian girls seeking partners abroad first emerged.
But why is it so? Why are there fewer men in Russia than women?
The reason why there are not enough males for all the females is obvious: Russian men die earlier.
In fact, so much earlier that after the usual demographic disproportion at birth, when the number of newborn boys exceeds the number of girls (about 106 boys to 100 girls), the excess death rate of young Russian guys becomes a problem for females seeking a husband in cities already at the age group 25-34.
Yurij Krupnov, the head of the observation council at the Institute of Demographics, explained that the reason why there are fewer men than women in Russia lies in the extreme death rate of young males, which is due to accidents and unhealthy lifestyle (read: alcohol abuse, drugs, etc.).
In short, young guys get drunk, start fights and other stupid things such as trying risky tricks while driving. Yes, they are not supposed to drive intoxicated, in fact, the permitted alcohol level in Russia for drivers is zero. Drivers aren’t allowed to have any alcohol in their blood.
The culture of drinking, risk, and violence
Fights among young males are frequent due to cultural encouragement of “sorting things out” with others via violence. One isn’t supposed to take any offence — real or imagined — without a physical fight. If he doesn’t react with violence in response to “disrespect” from others, his own friends may see him as a coward and will lose any authority he had.
Thus, boys fight, and since drinking a lot is also seen as a manly virtue, alcohol flows freely in groups of males, thus a lot of lose comments or jokes that could be perceived as “disrespect” and require “sorting out” in a fight.
Retreating from a “disrespect”, leave alone a purposeful offence without getting into a fight is basically impossible for any guy who doesn’t want to be labelled a “whimp”.
In the same way every member of the group is required to participate in risky challenges, which are often started by someone to show off, and then others try to keep up. Many can’t cope, especially being intoxicated, thus end up in a hospital or dead.
That’s the true reason why there fewer Russian men than women.
Females aren’t supposed to be strong, mentally or physically, so they don’t have such things. It’s a more acceptable way for a woman to react with tears in case of an offence, rather than any retort.
Read also:
- 22 things Russian men will never say to a woman
- Why so many young Russian women are divorced?
- I love Russian statistics (but this time it’s disappointing)
- Women to men ratio, gender breakdown in Russia
And here I thought it was because of mandatory military duty and all the wars. Interesting.
No, it’s hard drinking and risk-taking, predominantly. Russia hasn’t been at wars for a long time. Short-term military conflicts don’t take 1/10 of men facing early death due to culture traditions. The difference between the number of men and women in Russia is nearly 11 million. What size of war can do it?
The Great Patriotic War did that in a horrible way for the Soviet Union! Germany spread death and tragedy all over Europe. All the generations since have been very lucky, that the cold war never became a hot war.
Let’s all hope that such a tragedy will never happen again!
Horst, it’s been 75 years since the end of the WWII. The imbalance between males and females caused by that war in Russia and the rest of the USSR (and in the same extent by Stalin’s repressions, which killed more people than the war, also predominantly men) had already been rebalanced by the natural progression of the society: As usual, 106 boys are born for 100 girls for the last 75 years. So, that war is too far away to be an influence in the current situation. But new repressions by the current Russian regime, albeit not deadly, again target… Read more »