Happy women day

Random Facts About . . . 

Women

1. The biological sign for the female sex, a circle placed on top of a small cross, is also the symbol for the planet Venus. The symbol is believed to be a stylized representation of the Roman goddess Venus’ hand mirror.d    While many stars and moons are christened with female names, Venus is the only planet in our solar system given the name of a female goddess.d      In almost every country worldwide, the life expectancy for women is higher than for men.g    The most common cause of death for American women is heart disease, which causes just over 27% of all mortalities in females. Cancer ranks just below, causing 22% of female deaths.a 11.  Worldwide, women are nearly twice as likely to be blind or visually impaired as men. Experts attribute this difference to the greater longevity of women (leading to more age-related visual impairment) and specific eye diseases that are intrinsically more common in women such as dry eye syndrome and Fuch’s Dystrophy.a  Depression is the most common cause of disability in women, and approximately 25% of all women will experience severe depression at some point in their lives.a Over 90% of all cases of eating disorders occur in women, and nearly seven million women in the U.S. currently suffer from anorexia nervosa or bulimia.a Approximately one in five women worldwide reports being sexually abused before the age of 15.a  About 14 million adolescent girls become pregnant each year, with over 90% of those girls living in developing countries.a 19.The probability of a woman giving birth to a baby girl instead of a baby boy increases significantly the nearer the mother lives to the equator. While the cause of this gender selection is unknown, scientists believe the constant sunlight hours and abundant food supply in tropical regions may favor female births.e Approximately 5.6 million women in the U.S. reported themselves as stay-at-home moms in a 2007 census report.h The first Mother’s Day was held on May 10, 1908, and was organized by Anna Jarvis in West Virginia and Philadelphia. As the event gained popularity throughout the country, Congress designated the second Sunday in May as a national day of recognition for mothers in 1914.b International Women’s Day is held each year on March 8. The annual event was first observed worldwide in 1909.h The first country to grant women the right to vote in the modern era was New Zealand in 1893.f The first woman to rule a country as an elected leader in the modern era was Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, who was elected as prime minister of the island nation in 1960 and later re-elected in 1970.f  According to an ancient Sumerian legend, the universe was created by a female, the goddess Tiamat. This role of a female creator is not unique, as the Australian Aboriginal creation myth also credits the creation of life to a woman.d The earliest recorded female physician was Merit Ptah, a doctor in ancient Egypt who lived around 2700 B.C. Many historians believe she is the first woman recorded by name in the history of all of the sciences.d  A person’s gender is biologically determined by the sex chromosomes, one set of a human’s 23 pairs of chromosomes. Women have two X chromosomes, while men have one X and one Y chromosome.a The world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji, was published iN Japan around A.D. 1000 by female author Murasaki Shikibu.