[Vision2020] Another Myth Down The Drain

[Art Deco]

  My New Scientist


<http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22119-sinking-the-titanic-women-and-children-first-myth.html>
 Sinking the Titanic 'women and children first' myth

   - 20:00 30 July 2012 by *Alison
George*<http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=Alison+George>
   - Magazine issue 2876 <http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2876>. *Subscribe
   and save*<http://subscribe.newscientist.com/bundles.aspx?promcode=6005&term=1Y&intcmp=SUBS-nsarttop>
   -

   [image: "We found a lower survival rate for women on British ships than
on ships of other nations"]

"We found a lower survival rate for women on British ships than on ships of
other nations"

*Forget "women and children first" – it might have worked on the Titanic,
but it's usually every man for himself, says Mikael Elinder*

*Where does the notion arise that, when a ship sinks, women and children
come first?*
It appears to have started when the HMS Birkenhead ran aground off South
Africa in 1852, but the notion became widespread after the sinking of the
Titanic<http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18592-women-and-children-first-how-long-have-you-got.html>in
1912. The captain explicitly issued an order for women and children to
be saved first. As a result, the survival rate for women was three times
higher than for men.

*This idea of chivalry at sea has gained mythological status, but you're
the first person to examine if it's true for many other maritime disasters.
What did you find?*
We went through a list of over 100 major maritime disasters spanning three
centuries to see if we could find data on survival rates of men and women.
We ended up with data on 18 shipwrecks, involving 15,000 passengers. In
contrast to the Titanic, we found that the survival rate for men is
basically double that for women. We only have data on children for a
limited number of shipwrecks, but it is evident that they have really bad
survival prospects: just 15 per cent.

*What about the noble ideal that the captain and crew put the passengers
first and go down with the ship?*
What we can see clearly is that the crew were more likely to survive than
passengers, with 61 per cent surviving, compared to around 37 per cent of
male passengers. On average, the captain was more likely to survive than
the passengers.

*So this notion of chivalry at sea is a myth?*
Yes. It really is every man for himself.

*Why do you think we bought into the "women and children first" belief?*
The Titanic has been so extensively studied and it confirmed the myth.
There was little empirical evidence against it. Lucy Delap of Cambridge
University<http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/women-and-children-first/>argues
that this myth was spread by the British elite to prevent women
obtaining suffrage. They said, look at the Titanic, there is no reason to
give women the vote because men, even when facing death, will put the
interests of women first.

*In fact, you've found that, in general, women fare worse on British ships?*
Yes, It has been claimed that "women and children first" is just a British
phenomenon. But we found a lower survival rate for women on British ships
than on ships of other nations.

*You are an economist. Why are you interested in shipwreck survival?*
Other investigations of the Titanic disaster found that even when
incentives to pursue your own interests were really high – that you may die
if you don't – people can cooperate and act at the expense of their own
survival. This is in contrast to models that economists have of human
behaviour, that people are self-interested and act to maximise their own
well-being. We wanted to test these models in extreme situations by
analysing a completely new set of shipwrecks. We found that most shipwrecks
are the complete opposite to what happened on the Titanic.
 Profile

*Mikael Elinder*<http://www.ifn.se/eng/people/affiliated_researchers/affiliated_researchers/mikaele>is
an economist at Uppsala University, Sweden. His paper "Gender, social
norms, and survival rates" is in *PNAS* <http://www.pnas.org/> this week


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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