Female puberty raises mortality so girls die far more often than boys

Evidence

It is worth noting that this event has all the characteristics of a crisis; the woman’s body does not accept the species’ installation in her without a fight; and this fight weakens and endangers her; before puberty, about the same number of girls die for every 100 boys: from fourteen to eighteen, 128 girls die for every 100 boys, and from eighteen to twenty-two 105 girls for every 100 boys. This is the period when chlorosis, tuberculosis, scoliosis, osteomyelitis, and such strike. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 97

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete empirical claim; connects to feminist science studies debates about whether puberty’s ‘crisis’ framing is biological or socially produced.