Oh what a marvellous thing it is to be a woman I exclaim - now that I love my body, femininity and who I have grown to become - to the fullest. There are indeed a plethora of facts that should be celebrated based on our womanhood alone (but we obvs couldn't fit them all in this article) so we've narrowed it down and are giving you 14 eye opening facts about womanhood.
1. The two highest IQ scores in recorded history belong to women.
2. Ageing isn't so bad at all - as a woman’s clitoris grows throughout her lifetime. This means that many women in their forties and fifties have stronger orgasms than they did during their teens and twenties.
3. In the 1940s, women in the United States advertised products to gain weight and thus became more ideally curvy and beautiful. “Men wouldn’t look at me when I was skinny,” said one advertisement, “but since I gained 10 pounds this new, easy way, I have all the dates I want.”
4. Some women are born with two uteruses, a rare condition called uterus didelphys. Sometimes women with this condition also have two vaginas.
5. Although male brains are 9% larger than female brains, both have the same amount of brain cells. The brain cells in women merely pack together more densely.
6. Mary Anderson invented the windshield wiper in 1903. In addition, women over the years have patented non-reflective glass, disposable diapers, white out, and industrial lathes, among many other innovations.
7. Around the world, one woman dies every 90 seconds from complications of pregnancy or childbirth.
8. In Albania, a group of women called burneshas live in mountain villages as men in order to avoid societal restrictions. They cut their hair, wear men’s clothing, practice male gestures and mannerisms, change their names, and swear celibacy.
9. In India and Napal, the practice of widow burning (sati) occurred when women burned themselves alive on their husbands’ funeral pyres as a sign of devotion and love. It was meant to be a voluntary act, but occasionally women were drugged or pushed into the fire.
10. Women first began to wear heels in order to imitate men, who started donning high heels in the 1600s as a sign of their masculinity and status.
11. Because of the high production of oestrogen during puberty, girls’ brains generally mature two years earlier than boys’.
12. The anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that weighs options when making a decision, is larger in women than in men.
13. On average, women live 2–5 years longer than men, a fact which holds true in every country in the world. This isn’t limited to human beings; female orangutans and chimpanzees also outlive their male counterparts.
14. Two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were built by women: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were planted by the Assyrian Queen Semiramis; and the Masoleum of Halicarnassus was built by Artemisia, queen of Caria.