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By Root 1555 0

On a superficial level, this makes sense. Women are physically weaker, on average, and traditionally more responsible for caring for others. Maybe they should worry more. But when risk expert Paul Slovic tried to explain the gender gap this way, he ran into problems. The stereotype didn’t quite fit. For example, African American men worried just as much as women generally did. So unless African American men are born nurturers, nature didn’t entirely explain the difference. Slovic tried other variables. Are women and minorities less educated and so more emotional in their risk assessments? Well, no. When Slovic controlled for education, the sex and race differences persisted. In fact, when he asked scientists who study risk perception for a living to rank hazards, women scientists still tended to worry more than their male counterparts. Maybe women and minorities just have less faith in government authorities. Do they worry more because they don’t trust other people to do it for them? But there again, when the researchers controlled for such attitudes, it didn’t fully explain the worry gap.

Eventually, Slovic realized he was obsessing over the wrong people. Men were the ones throwing off the curve, not women or minorities. And not all men, but a small subgroup.

As it turns out, about 30 percent of white males see very little risk in most threats. They create much of the gender and race gap all on their own. So then Slovic began to study these white men. They had a few subtle things in common. “They liked the world of status, hierarchy, and power,” says Slovic. They believed in technology. They were more likely than any other group to disagree with the statement that people should be treated more equally. Usually, they were white men, but not always. The more important factor was how they viewed the world and their place in it. If a white male felt discriminated against or marginalized by society, then he would likely switch sides, joining women and minorities in their worry.

So does that mean it’s better to be a woman who worries than a man who doesn’t? In some disasters, worrying definitely helps. It can motivate people to evacuate before it’s too late. For example, it’s relatively easy to convince women with children to leave their homes before a hurricane. In other cases, though, worrying is not nearly enough, and other, more egregious gender differences matter more. In many countries hit by the 2004 tsunami, for example, women did not know how to swim, and men did. The survival rates varied accordingly. In four Indonesian villages surveyed by Oxfam after the tsunami, male survivors outnumbered females by a ratio of almost three to one.

Sometimes gender handicaps are embarrassingly banal. On 9/11, women were almost twice as likely to get injured while evacuating, according to the Columbia study. Was it a question of strength? Confidence? Fear? No, says lead investigator Robyn Gershon. “It was the shoes.” Many women took off their heels halfway through the evacuation and had to walk home barefoot. Survivors reported tripping over piles of high-heeled shoes in the staircases.

Often, other disadvantages overwhelm the effect of worry. Of all the people who die in fires each year, 25 percent are African American—twice their share of the population. The disparity is most glaring when it comes to children: African American and American Indian children are nearly twice as likely to die in a fire than white or Asian children.

Fire, as it turns out, is mostly about money. “I never fought a fire in a rich person’s home,” says Denis Onieal, who became a firefighter in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1971 and is now superintendent of the National Fire Academy. Fires are more likely in places with shoddy construction where people use portable heaters to stay warm and where smoke detectors are absent or not working. In poor neighborhoods, then, fire is part of the hazardscape, says Onieal. “You got addicts on the corner, you got people who steal your lunch money, and you got fires.”

The simple truth is that money matters more than