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We know why the burden of disease is disproportionately carried by men, it’s not a medical mystery. Men have much higher risk tolerance and lower inhibition, so are more likely to take physical risks and are more likely to try and become addicted to harmful substances like drugs and alcohol which cause many diseases that shorten life expectancy.
This is a good point, but do we know WHY do men have much higher risk tolerance and lower inhibition?
Moreover, in today's political climate, don't we want to achieve equal outcome? If the factors are biological, then we need health research funding to achieve equal outcomes. If the factors are social, then we need health research funding and social programs to achieve equal outcomes.
Mind you, almost all dangerous jobs are done by men. Chemical exposure, mental stress, transportation - you name it.
The greater male variability hypothesis and the related cluster of explanations is still the best theory I've seen bandied around for this.
The Y chromosome has a much higher mutation rate and its presence determines sex, which makes men the volatile and unstable genetic testing ground, and women the selectors and carriers of the successful experiments.
Of course it's a lot more complicated and nuanced than that at the margins. But I think the broad idea is sound. And it coheres with the behavioral traits you name because this specialization ties us into opposite behavioral strategies as to how much we desire to conform to social norms.
It remains to be seen whether this climate is sustainable. Nature does tend to win over moral fads in the long run. It doesn't always do so, but unless technology makes sexual dimorphism truly irrelevant, I think this equalizing is a fool's errand.
What?
No, the reason males are more risk taking is because a male can impregnate multiple females, where as, a female can only be impregnated by one male. So a male has a higher expected return to risk taking mating strategies.
Chickens are the opposite of humans where females have ZW chromosomes and males have ZZ chromosomes; however, roosters are famously aggressive and risk taking. You can't stop them from fighting if enclosed together.
Males are indeed the homogametic sex in the ZW system, but the argument still stands if Z-linked genes evolve faster than W-linked ones, making females more genetically stable, which is actually something we have observed in birds and in snakes.
If we could find a species with a neutral or female biased mutation rate where males still exhibit more risk taking behavior, that would be an issue for this theory, but I don't know of any.
The argument from the economics of reproduction is also sound in my opinion, but it isn't mutually exclusive with the genetic one.
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