Rudyard Kipling was right: "The female of the species is more deadly than the male." Even, apparently, when it comes to weather events. Hurricanes with female names have higher death tolls than those with male names, according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And societal gender bias, researchers say, is to blame. According to the multi-part study, the more feminine the name assigned to a severe hurricane, the higher its death toll. Researchers believe implicit gender stereotypes — women are less violent than men, for example — skew the public's expectation of how dangerous an approaching storm really is and whether they need to take emergency measures, such as evacuation. Basically, people would be more likely to choose to ride out Hurricane Britney than Hurricane Brutus.
The study's conclusions were based on a series of reviews and experiments. Researchers compiled fatalities and ...
