Abstract
According to Ashley Montagu, females have a more sturdy constitution than males. Edward Shorter defends another argument : prior to the medical progress of this century, woman's health, from the end of infancy to around age 45, was precarious ; added to the risks related to pregnancy and childbirth, this made her prone to early death. To throw light on the true pattem of female mortality in the past, this paper examines statistics for girls and adolescents on one hand and women of childbearing age on the other. For the latter, maternal mortality was apparently the only cause of excess female mortality. For girls and adolescents, the oldest observations suggest that excess female mortality did not always exist for thèse age-groups, but the fact that the medical and other progress made was initially of less benefit to girls than boys still requires explanation.
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