6/84Percentage of voters who say they are more likely to vote Democratic in November if a woman is on the ticket: 26
7/84Earnings of the average U.S. female worker, expressed as a percentage of the average male’s, in 1981: 59.9
7/84Ranking of Denmark, Italy, and the U.S. in the percentage of women who wear C- or D-cup bras: 1,2,3
1/85Percentage of women executives who say they prefer a male boss: 29
10/85Rank of national and local Miss America pageants among all sources of college scholarship money for women: 1
2/85Average yearly increase in the number of women in the U.S. military during the first Reagan Administration: 6,615
3/85Percentage of married women in the United States who say they have been raped by their husbands: 14
4/85Percentage of Thai women between the ages of 15 and 30 who are prostitutes: 10
10/86Percentage of men who say their biggest sports thrill would be to get the winning hit in the World Series: 32
11/86Percentage increase, since 1975, in the number of prime-time TV characters who are women over 50: 500
12/86Percentage of Americans in 1957 who said that an unmarried woman was “sick,” “neurotic,” or “immoral”: 80
12/86Percentage of female college freshmen who say there should be a law against homosexual relationships: 38
2/86Percentage of the babies born to unmarried white women under 25 that are given up for adoption: 8
2/86Percentage increase, since 1974, in the number of self-employed men: 12
5/86Chances that a female graduate student in psychology has had sex with one of her professors: 1 in 6
Today: 2 to 1
1/87Rank of AIDS among the causes of death for women aged 25 to 29 in New York City: 1
12/87Percentage of women in two-income families who say they “almost always” prepare the tax returns: 29
3/87Portion of 1982 medical school graduates specializing in obstetrics and gynecology who were women: 1/3
10/88Number of women appointed Official Salem Witch by Governor Michael Dukakis: 1
12/88Percentage of doctors who say they would reject an unmarried woman’s request for artificial insemination: 50
12/88Percentage of doctors who say they would allow a woman to choose a sperm donor based on his religion: 56
2/88Percentage of married men and women who say they were worried about sex on their wedding night: 18
6/88Number of universities that have a Barbra Streisand Professor of Women and Men in Society: 1
10/89Weight of the Bridgeport, Connecticut, woman who killed her husband in July by sitting on him, in pounds: 500
9/89Percentage of CEOs who say they would “hesitate” to promote a homosexual to an executive position: 66
Percentage of the U.S. Marines discharged last year for homosexuality who were women: 35
Percentage of U.S. Marines last year who were women: 5
Percentage who think this today: 49
3/90Chances that an American woman considers herself a strong supporter of the women’s movement: 1 in 5
3/90Number of the 43 contestants in the annual Rotten Sneaker Contest held in Vermont last March who were women: 1
5/90Ratio of women who buy Mother’s Day cards to men who do: 5:1
Ratio of women who buy Father’s Day cards to men who do: 8:1
9/90Percentage of men who are chronically constipated: 12
1/91Percentage of male college students who say that “some women look as though they’re just asking to be raped”: 84
11/91Rank of murder, among the most common causes of on-the-job death for female workers in the United States: 1
11/91Change, since 1979, in the average annual earnings of a black woman with only a high school diploma: +$279
2/91Percentage of all valentines that are sent by women: 85
3/91Ratio of the number of profanities uttered by actors to the number uttered by actresses in films released in the 1960s: 10:1
4/91Ratio of the size of the female spider monkey’s clitoris to the size of the male monkey’s penis: 2:1
5/91Number of times a nude or seminude woman accepted a Domino’s Pizza delivery in Washington, D.C., last year: 15
9/91Percentage of the references to male tennis players made by TV sportscasters that use the player’s first name only: 8
Percentage of the references to female tennis players that do: 53 [see page 38]
9/91Weight of the ovarian cyst removed in May from a West Virginia woman, in pounds: 180
1/92Number of Polish women who have graduated from the Warsaw School of Grace since it opened in 1988: 5,000
11/92Amount by which the number of women voting in 1988 exceeded the number of men who voted: 7,000,000
12/92Ratio of American marriages between black men and white women to those between black women and white men: 2:1
12/92Percentage change, since 1990, in the number of women between the ages of 40 and 44 using birth control pills: +100
5/92Percentage of women who cite a suspected fetal-health problem among the reasons for their abortion: 13
6/92Average monthly contributions to the Women’s Campaign Fund since Anita Hill’s testimony last October: $78,471
7/92Percentage of male college students who believe that life is “a meaningless existential hell”: 27
7/92Percentage of female college students who say they would rather have sex with Harry Connick Jr. than Axl Rose: 76
8/92Percentage of French women who do not view being asked to undress for a job interview as sexual harassment: 20
8/92Chances that a Republican woman running for Congress this fall is pro-choice: 1 in 3
10/93Rank of Mother Teresa and Elizabeth Taylor, among the women most admired by U.S. Latinos: 1,2
Rank of Bill Clinton and the Pope, among the men most admired: 1,2
4/93Ratio of the number of women who deal with depression by eating to the number of men who do: 3:1
Ratio of the number of men who deal with depression by drinking or taking drugs to the number of women who do: 5:1
5/93Percentage of female congressional staffers who say they have been sexually harassed by a congressman: 11
6/93Price of golf, dinner, beer, and a “cart dance” by a topless female caddie at Fort Worth’s New Orleans Nights club: $620
7/93Number of doctors invited to apply for a staff-physician job at a Georgia women’s clinic since February: 3,000
Number who have responded: 1
7/93Average decrease in the number of minutes women spend on housekeeping for every hour spent at a paying job: 26
7/93Number of women scalped by hay balers in New York State since 1976: 4
1/94Rounds it took 16-year-old Dallas Malloy to win the first official women’s amateur boxing match, held last fall: 3
11/94Number of congressional races this year in which both major-party candidates are women: 10
2/94Estimated annual spending on medical treatment for foot deformities caused by women’s ill-fitting shoes: $2,000,000,000
2/94Amount a Chicago woman won last year after suing her former fiancé for breaking their 7-week engagement: $178,000
4/94Number of women a Texas company fired last year after O.S.H.A. ordered it to build more women’s rest rooms: 30
5/94Percentage of Americans who say that women “sometimes deserve to be hit by their husbands or boyfriends”: 12
Percentage who say that men “sometimes deserve to be hit by their wives or girlfriends”: 29
7/94Number of women asked to leave an exhibit of Rubens nudes in Toledo, Ohio, last winter because they were breast-feeding: 1
9/94Amount for which a Pennsylvania woman is suing the state’s lottery commission because she has never won: $1,500,000
12/95Number of stories about Hillary Clinton’s attendance of the U.N.’s women’s conference that appeared on Chinese TV: 0
7/95Number of years Jeanne Louise Calment, France’s oldest woman, smoked cigarettes before she quit in 1993: 98
10/96Years it took the Japanese government to apologize for using South Korean POWs as “comfort women” for its troops: 51
10/96Estimated number of South Koreans officially registered last year as “club women” for U.S. military bases: 18,000
3/96Percentage of American men who believe “the country would be better off” if more members of Congress were women: 63
6/96Number of last year’s newsweekly magazine covers featuring women who are not princesses, murderers, or models: 0
7/96Chances that a cartoon in The New Yorker’s Women’s Issue was drawn by a man: 5 in 6
7/96Cost per minute to hear the Bill of Rights read over the phone “in a provocative manner” by a woman named Bambi: $1.98
3/97Price for which a Kissimmee, Florida, woman allegedly offered to sell her five-year-old niece to a stranger last December: $24
3/97Percentage of British women who find Prime Minister John Major “attractive”: 2
Percentage who find Labour Leader Tony Blair “smarmy”: 24
8/97Letters of complaint elicited by a Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman episode in which she supports evolution: 80
Letters of complaint the show received about an episode in which her son goes camping with Walt Whitman: 94
11/98Estimated number of American women arrested for child abuse since 1977 after using drugs or alcohol while pregnant: 200
2/98Factor by which male readership of Sports Illustrated increases for the swimsuit edition: 2
2/98Average amount a man spends on Valentine’s Day for every dollar a woman spends: $1.60
4/98Chance that a woman first elected to the U.S. House or Senate before 1993 was a congressional widow: 1 in 4
4/99Settlement paid 3 female federal inmates last year after guards sold them as sex slaves to male prisoners: $500,000
7/99Height, in feet, of a scarlet “A” a Sunnyside, Wash., woman put in her family’s yard last fall to protest her father’s adultery: 7
1/00Percentage change in the average amount of cloth required to clothe a U.S. woman between 1913 and 1928: -64
Number of World War I battleships said to have been built from the steel donated by U.S. women from their corsets: 2
1/00Rank of “shed[ding] my enemies’ blood and wring[ing] tears from their women” among Genghis Khan’s greatest joys: 1
Rank of “crush[ing] your enemies … and hear[ing] the lamentations of the women” among Conan the Barbarian’s: 1
10/00Factor by which pregnancy makes a woman more attractive to malaria-carrying mosquitoes: 2
2/00Factor by which the pregnancy-related death rate among African-American women exceeds that of white women: 3
4/00Number of days a Norse woman incubated a bird’s egg between her breasts last spring before giving up: 28
1/01Average annual number of male clients served in America in 1999 by each female prostitute: 694
12/01Years after Ernest Hemingway killed himself that his transsexual son died last fall in a Miami women’s jail: 40
12/01Percentage change between 1998 and 1999 in the number of women construction workers: +36
2/01Percentage of women who chose Al Gore or George Bush from among last year’s presidential nominees to be their valentine: 40
Percentage who refused to choose: 44
5/01Estimated number of “crush films” involving live rodents and high-heeled women seized from a New York man in 1999: 70
1/02Number of years after being executed as witches that six Massachusetts women were exonerated last fall: 309
1/02Number of knee bends that a 59-year-old Ukrainian woman performed last fall to protest U.S. attacks on Afghanistan: 1,101
10/02Percentage of seats in Pakistan’s parliamentary elections this month that will be reserved for women: 19
2/02Amount a nonprofit U.S. conservative group pays drug-addicted women to undergo sterilization: $200
6/02Number of ecstasy tablets seized at Miami’s airport in February from an 81-year-old woman in a wheelchair: 9,931
8/02Years that a Nigerian woman appealing a sentence of death by stoning in March will be allowed to live to wean her baby: 1.5
8/02Percentage of Afghans who will “soon” get AIDS if adulterous women are not jailed, according to a government deputy: 50
2/03Percentage change since 2000 in the number of syphilis cases among U.S. men and women, respectively: +15, -18
2/03Number of female characters with supernatural powers on major U.S. network-television programs last season: 20
3/03Amount the U.S. Air Force will pay a Texas woman this year for mistakenly hitting her home with a dummy bomb: $12,000
3/03Percentage points by which wearing a swimsuit increased the average math test score among men in a Michigan study: 4
10/04Chance that a southern Sudanese woman will die in childbirth: 1 in 9
10/04Seconds by which this year’s winner of the men’s Olympic 400-meter dash was faster than the winner of the women’s: 5.81
2/04Rank of Rwanda among countries with the largest proportion of women in their lower legislative house: 1
2/04Rank of the death rate for women in childbirth in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan region among the highest ever recorded: 1
4/04Number of cents a U.S. woman earned for every dollar that a U.S. man did in 1983 and 2000, respectively: 80.4, 79.7
4/04Ratio of the number of Afghan men who have registered to the number of women who have done so: 10:3
5/04Percentage of senior management positions in medium-size Russian companies that are held by women: 42
Percentage of senior management positions at equivalent U.S. companies that are: 20
Chance that a corporate officer of a Fortune 500 company today is: 1 in 6
11/05Number of erotic Harry Potter fan-fiction stories posted on a website run by an Illinois woman: 1,750
Average number of hits the site receives each day: 198,000
11/05Number of out-of-town men who posted to New Orleans ’s Craigslist site seeking refugee women: 49
2/05Number of states where women seeking abortions are required to be told that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer: 3
Number of the eighty-nine experts convened in 2003 by the National Cancer Institute who found any evidence of such a link: 1
5/05Number of female U.S. soldiers disciplined this year for mud-wrestling at an Iraqi prison camp: 2
6/05Average percentage by which the power of the male heart declines between the ages of 18 and 75: 20
6/05Ratio of women to men killed in last December’s tsunami, in a survey of eight Indonesian villages: 3:1
7/05Chance that a woman in one of the U.S. military’s three service academies claims to have been sexually harassed: 1 in 2
12/06Percentage of women who have an orgasm during sex with a man, according to an Australian study: 69
Percentage who do during sex with another woman: 76
3/06Percentage change in the amount of housework done by women after they marry for the first time: +17
Percentage change in the amount done by men: ‒33
5/06Number of Harlequin novels published last year that feature love between a Western woman and an Arab sheikh: 15
Number by 2008 that will feature NASCAR races: 22
9/06Change, in hertz, in the average pitch of Australian women’s voices since 1945: ‒23
9/06Number of convictions that have been handed down so far under India’s 1996 law to ban sex-determination tests: 1
1/07Factor by which male life-scientists are more likely to patent their findings than are their female counterparts: 2.5
11/07Estimated percentage of women’s college sports teams that were coached by women when Title IX was enacted in 1972: 90
Percentage today: 42
12/07Estimated percentage of the world’s male smokers who live in the United States and China, respectively: 3, 31
2/07Percentage of city-dwelling Indian men aged 16 to 25 who say they expect the woman they marry to be a virgin: 63
Percentage of these who have had sex with a prostitute or another man, respectively: 22, 17
3/07Portion of female college students and graduates who say attending Spring Break results in “increased sexual activity”: 3/4