These countries have so many more men
Which is weird because women live longer on average
Later today I have a video about a clump of states within the United States that all have more men than women. It’s a fascinating subject because, well, women simply live longer than men! It’s for this reason that there are generally more women than men in most countries. The United States, United Kingdom, Denmark, Canada, Australia, Colombia, Argentina, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Ghana, Botswana, and so many more all have more women than men. There are, of course, a few outliers such as India and China which both have more men. This is largely due to societal factors that favor men and thus created a systemic problem where female babies were actively discarded. That’s sounds harsh and morbid, but it’s the sad reality.
Today, both India and China are beginning to normalize their male/female birth ratios, which is great! China is currently about 51% men and 49% women and India is about 52% men and 48% women. But when you’re the two largest countries in the world by population, each with about 1.4 billion people, even relatively small population shifts can have huge impacts. And it’s largely because of these two, and a few others, that shift the global gender population ration towards men. According to the United Nations, as of 2024, there are about 4.1 billion men and 4.05 billion women, leading to an excess male population of about 50 million.
This is all really interesting stuff and, again, if you want to learn more about the United States specifically, go check out my video below! But now, I want to turn your attention in this article to the Middle East, which doesn’t just have more men… they have SO MANY MORE MEN than women. In fact, here are their specific population gender ratios:
Qatar - 3.39 men for every 1 woman
United Arab Emirates - 2.56 men for every 1 woman
Bahrain - 1.53 men for every 1 woman
Kuwait - 1.38 men for every 1 woman
Saudi Arabia - 1.3 men for every 1 woman
Oman - 1.18 men for every 1 woman
Jordan - 1.11 men for every 1 woman
Qatar is simply incredible. With just a single woman for every 3.39 men it would have an unbelievably challenging demographic hurdle if this was all because of the natural birth/death cycle. But it’s not! In fact, there’s a very poignant reason why Qatar, and all of these countries, have such a lopsided male-female ratio… migrant labor!
Recall back in 2022 when Qatar, a very tiny country by the way, was tasked with hosting the World Cup, the largest sporting event in the world. As part of this task, it needed to build a lot of stadiums. Stadiums that could hold 40,000+ thousand people. This is a huge task for any country, but especially for Qatar because Qatar does not have a large population.
Right now, as you read this, there are about 2.6 million people living in Qatar, give or take a few thousand. But of those 2.8 million people, only 313,000 are actual Qatari citizens. The rest, about 2.5 million, are all expatriates from other countries that have moved there for one reason or another. But a very large reason is the country’s constant need for migrant labor. Qatari men, as it turns out, aren’t very amenable to building their own stuff in an otherwise very hot climate. So, instead, they turn to largely south Asian migrant workers.
These South Asian migrant workers, which made up about 1.5 million of Qatar’s population as of 2017 (that number has likely grown considerably since then) mostly hail from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. These workers, mostly men, flocked to the country with the promise of higher wages in exchange for brutal construction labor. And thus, you get a country where the number of men far outweigh the number of women. The same can essentially be said for every other country on this list.
It’s also worth pointing out though that, while migrant labor is a primary reason for this gender divide, these countries are also well known for their harsh treatment of women and preference for sons rather than daughters. Similar to India and China in decades’ past, these countries have a way of discarding baby girls in the hopes that they’ll get a son instead. Again, that sounds very harsh, but it’s the unfortunately reality. There’s actually a really good TED Talk about this from 2010. Still holds up in my opinion!
Anyway, if you want to know why these U.S. states have so many more men, check out the video here at 2:00pm PT! I’ll also be watching it in the live chat with you all so feel free to come ask me questions!
The names at the end were brilliant! 😂