It spite of feminists claims to the contrary it has been know for some time that woman are less able to cope with stress and trauma than men are. Stress-related mental illnesses occurs at least twice as often in women as it does in men. Becca Shansky, a graduate student in neurobiology at Yale School of Medicine has found that, unsurprisingly, this is probably due to estrogen, the hormone responsible femaleness.

Adverse reaction to stress was measured by increasing memory impairment. She found that females susceptibility to stress matched the cyclical nature of estrogen levels within the body. As estrogen levels peaked so did the female's impairment when placed in mildly stressful situations. Males on the other hand showed no such impairment.

Extremely stressful situations induced memory impairment in both sexes.

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