Global Study Finds Women Have More Sensitive Hearing Than Men

According to a recent international study, hearing amplitude is more influenced by sex than age, with women showing more hearing sensitivity than men.

For their study, a team of scholars from the Centre for Biodiversity and Environmental Research in France and the University of Bath in the United Kingdom conducted hearing tests with 448 participants across 13 global populations in Ecuador, England, Gabon, South Africa, and Uzbekistan. They found the strongest influence on hearing amplitude was sex. Across all study populations, women averaged two decibels more sensitive hearing than men. After sex, the second most influential factor on hearing amplitude was the environment, followed by age and ear side.

The authors offer several hypotheses that could explain why women tend to hear better than men, including physiological differences in androgen exposure, structural cochlear anatomy, and outer hair cell function. They also highlight that “given the well-documented detrimental effects of noise on overall health, women’s heightened cochlear sensitivity in noisy environments may entail evolutionary trade-offs.” As women tend to live longer than men, yet often have more adverse health outcomes, these findings could help advance future research on women’s quality of life and biological aging.