In terms of population size, the sex ratio in the United States favors females, although the gender gap is remaining stable. In 2010, there were around 5.17 million more women, with the difference projected to decrease to around 3 million by 2027.
Gender ratios by U.S. state In the United States, the resident population was estimated to be around 331.89 million in 2021. The gender distribution of the nation has remained steady for several years, with women accounting for approximately 51.1 percent of the population since 2013. Females outnumbered males in the majority of states across the country in 2020, and there were eleven states where the gender ratio favored men.
Metro areas by population National differences between male and female populations can also be analyzed by metropolitan areas. In general, a metropolitan area is a region with a main city at its center and adjacent communities that are all connected by social and economic factors. The largest metro areas in the U.S. are New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. In 2019, there were more women than men in all three of those areas, but Jackson, Missouri was the metro area with the highest share of female population.
Alaska had the highest male to female ratio in the United States in 2020, with ***** men for every 100 women. The male to female ratio was lowest in the District of Columbia, with **** men for every 100 women. The final frontier Alaska, which was purchased from the Russian Empire in 1867, is the largest state in the U.S. and one of the newest states, having been admitted to the U.S. in 1959. Although oil production dominates the economy, Alaska has a very high poverty rate and consistently has the highest unemployment rate in the country. It’s a man’s world Alaska is one of 10 states in the U.S. that has more men than women. The male to female ratio in the United States as a whole is about even, but as the population ages, there tend to be more females than males. Even though the sex ratio in the U.S. is almost one to one, a little more than ** percent of all females participated in the labor force in 2021, compared with **** percent of men.
As of July 1, 2024, there were 168.34 million males and 171.77 million females living in the United States. The overall population of the United States has remained steady since 2010.
Worldwide, the male population is slightly higher than the female population, although this varies by country. As of 2024, Hong Kong has the highest share of women worldwide with almost ** percent. Moldova followed behind with around ** percent. Among the countries with the largest share of women in the total population, several were former Soviet states or were located in Eastern Europe. By contrast, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman had some of the highest proportions of men in their populations.
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Population, female (% of total population) in United States was reported at 49.76 % in 2024, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United States - Population, female (% of total) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on September of 2025.
The estimated population of the U.S. was approximately 334.9 million in 2023, and the largest age group was adults aged 30 to 34. There were 11.88 million males in this age category and around 11.64 million females. Which U.S. state has the largest population? The population of the United States continues to increase, and the country is the third most populous in the world behind China and India. The gender distribution has remained consistent for many years, with the number of females narrowly outnumbering males. In terms of where the residents are located, California was the state with the highest population in 2023. The U.S. population by race and ethnicity The United States is well known the world over for having a diverse population. In 2023, the number of Black or African American individuals was estimated to be 45.76 million, which represented an increase of over four million since the 2010 census. The number of Asian residents has increased at a similar rate during the same time period and the Hispanic population in the U.S. has also continued to grow.
In 2023, female motorists accounted for just over half of all licensed drivers in the United States, with around ***** million female licensees compared to ***** million male licensees. The total number of licensed drivers stood at around ***** million. Fewer younger drivers The share of young drivers in the driving population fell significantly between 2010 and 2020. Under 20-year-olds accounted for about *** percent of total license-holders in 2019, down to under *** percent in 2020. The reason for this is being put to the increased number of drivers in other age cohorts, and also the rising costs of car insurance, which is highest for young male drivers. The rise in insurance premiums on young men should not come as a surprise, as young men are more likely than any other demographic to die at the wheel. Non-binary gender options Some federal states issue third gender identities. License-holders can choose between three options: M, F, and X. However, even if more and more states are to accommodate non-binary gender identities, this has yet to become included in national statistics.
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Much evidence indicates that men experienced an evolutionary history of physical competition, both one-on-one and in coalitions. We thus hypothesized that, compared to girls and women, boys and men will possess a greater motivational predisposition to be interested in sports, especially team sports. According to most scholars, advocacy groups, and the United States courts, however, this hypothesis is challenged by modest sex differences in organized school sports participation in the contemporary U.S., where females comprise 42% of high school participants and 43% of intercollegiate participants. We conducted three studies to test whether organized school sports participation data underestimate the actual sex difference in sports participation. Study 1 analyzed the American Time Use Survey, which interviewed 112,000 individuals regarding their activities during one day. Females accounted for 51% of exercise (i.e., non-competitive) participations, 24% of total sports participations, and 20% of team sports participations. These sex differences were similar for older and younger age groups. Study 2 was based on systematic observations of sports and exercise at 41 public parks in four states. Females accounted for 37% of exercise participations, 19% of individual sports participations, and 10% of team sports participations. Study 3 involved surveying colleges and universities about intramural sports, which primarily consist of undergraduate participation in team sports. Across 34 institutions, females accounted for 26% of registrations. Nine institutions provided historical data, and these did not indicate that the sex difference is diminishing. Therefore, although efforts to ensure more equitable access to sports in the U.S. (i.e., Title IX) have produced many benefits, patterns of sports participation do not challenge the hypothesis of a large sex difference in interest and participation in physical competition.
As of February 2025, 50.2 percent of social media users in the United States were women, and 49.8 percent of users were men. In 2024, there were an estimated 304 million social media users in the country.
In 2025, women accounted for 47 percent of gamers in the United States, up from 46 percent of U.S. gamers identifying as women during the previous year.
What percentage gamers are female? Almost half of gaming audiences in the United States are female. This development has been ongoing for years, and whereas women are under-represented in games media and the industry, they make up a sizable chunk of gamers and spending power. There are some differences in terms of genre preferences but as a whole, female gaming audiences in the United States are just as engaged as their male counterparts.
Since 1990, the employment rate of women in the United States has stayed more or less steady, reaching a peak of 57.5 percent in 2000. In 1990, the female employment rate was 54.3 percent, and in 2024, the employment rate was 55.2. Women in the workforce There have historically been fewer women than men in the workforce. Additionally, women face many hurdles to equal treatment when they are employed, such as wage discrepancies, sexual harassment, and being expected to carry out the majority of household and family related tasks even while working full-time. Women have historically been the primary caregivers and homemakers through many cultures worldwide. Despite this, the number of women joining the workforce has increased globally. Women in history faced the additional barrier of not being able to attend university, which barred them from gaining an education and access to professional job. However, as our cultures have modernized, women have been granted equal access to university in many societies. In 2014 in the United States, the number of university degrees awarded to women exceeded that of men for the first time. In 2021, 39.1 percent of women had completed at least four years of university compared to 36.6 percent of men. Despite this, the unemployment rate of women in the United States has fluctuated significantly since 1990. In 2021, Nebraska was the state with the highest percentage of women participating in the civilian labor force, second to the District of Columbia. The wage gap Today, the wage gap is still a problem for women, although improvements have been made. There is no state in the U.S. where women earn more than men, but women in Vermont had the smallest wage gap to men in 2021. Additionally, there are no occupations in which women out-earn men, even in occupations that traditionally employ more women. A more detailed look at wage inequality in the United States can be found here.
A study on the publishing industry in the United States revealed that ** percent of employees in the field were cis women in 2019, whereas men accounted for ** percent. Cisgender men were more likely to be employed in executive level positions than in any other capacity, with women making up more than ** percent of marketing and publicity staff and literary agents. Meanwhile, transgender, intersex, and non-binary people had little to no representation in the industry.
The number of male physicians outnumbers female physicians in the U.S. in most specialties. The only major exceptions are found in pediatrics, child and adolescent psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, although female physicians do slightly outnumber males in a few other specialties. As of 2021, there were around 68,400 male family medicine/general practice physicians compared to 50,000 women in this specialty. Physicians in the U.S. Both the number of doctors and rate of doctors in the U.S. have increased over the years. As of 2021, there were around 946,800 active doctors of medicine in the U.S. This was around 29.9 physicians per 10,000 civilian population. In 1995, this rate stood at 24.2 physicians per 10,000 population. Physicians by state The states with the highest overall number of active physicians are California, New York, Texas, and Florida. However, the states with the highest rate of physicians per 10,000 civilian population include Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maryland. The District of Columbia has the highest rate of physicians by a large margin, with around 74.6 physicians per 10,000 population. The state with the highest annual compensation for physicians is Oklahoma, where physicians earn an annual average of 337,000 dollars.
During a June 2023 survey, more than ********** (or **** percent) of responding members of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) in the United States identified as female. Men comprised **** percent of respondents, while non-binary professionals accounted for *** percent. Sexual diversity in the advertising and marketing industry The same study revealed that approximately ** percent of the responding professionals identified as heterosexuals, whereas gay, lesbian, and bisexual ad and marketing professionals accounted for *** percent of the total. The remaining *** percent consisted of sexual orientations, including persons identifying as anthrosexual, asexual, demisexual, and pansexual, among others. Ad and marketing segment's ethnical diversity Between 2021 and 2023, little more than two-thirds of professionals surveyed in the U.S. identified as non-Hispanic white people. During the latest edition of the study, around ** percent of the workers in the marketing and ad sector were Asian, *** percent were Hispanic or Latino, and ***** percent Black or African American.
The share of women in the United States House of Representatives has increased significantly since 1965. In that year, only *** percent of Representatives were women. In 2025, that number had increased to **** percent of the House. Despite the significant progress made to female representation in politics, there is still work to be done given that women actually outnumber men in the United States.
In 2021, survey data on book readers in the United States revealed that ** percent of female respondents stated they had read or listened to at least one book in the previous 12 months. The share of men who had read a book in that time frame was slightly lower at ** percent, but marked an increase from the ** percent recorded two years earlier. Book readers in the U.S. Whilst digital formats have overtaken print in terms of popularity and consumption, many U.S. media consumers still enjoy a good book – though women tend to read more books than men. A 2018 survey showed that 11 percent of U.S. women read ** or more books that year, compared to **** percent of male respondents. Women were also more likely to prefer reading books in paperback format, and much less likely to be fans of comic books. Regardless of adults’ preferences, something which many U.S. readers agree on is the importance of reading to children. According to a report on family reading habits, 58 percent of parents with a child aged between three and five years old said that they read aloud to their child **** to ***** times per week. The frequency of read-aloud time diminished as children grew older, usually because the child could then read independently, though some children eventually swap reading for other activities such as playing video games, watching television, or using social media.
The Second World War had a sever impact on gender ratios across European countries, particularly in the Soviet Union. While the United States had a balanced gender ratio of one man for every woman, in the Soviet Union the ratio was below 5:4 in favor of women, and in Soviet Russia this figure was closer to 4:3.
As young men were disproportionately killed during the war, this had long-term implications for demographic development, where the generation who would have typically started families in the 1940s was severely depleted in many countries.
In 2023, the Rhode Island had the highest earnings ratio for women, as female workers earned ***** percent of their male counterparts on average. The state of Louisiana had the lowest earnings ratio for female workers, who earned ***** percent of what their male counterparts earn.
As of February 2025, men accounted for 63 percent of X, formerly Twitter, users in the United States. Additionally, the U.S. was home to the world's largest Twitter audience, with over 105 million users in early 2024.
Across all branches of the U.S. military, men were more likely to be officers than women. In 2023, there were 75,077 male officers in the U.S. Army, compared to 17,709 female officers. This contrast was even more stark in the Marine Corps, where there were 19,074 male officers and 2,171 female officers.
In terms of population size, the sex ratio in the United States favors females, although the gender gap is remaining stable. In 2010, there were around 5.17 million more women, with the difference projected to decrease to around 3 million by 2027.
Gender ratios by U.S. state In the United States, the resident population was estimated to be around 331.89 million in 2021. The gender distribution of the nation has remained steady for several years, with women accounting for approximately 51.1 percent of the population since 2013. Females outnumbered males in the majority of states across the country in 2020, and there were eleven states where the gender ratio favored men.
Metro areas by population National differences between male and female populations can also be analyzed by metropolitan areas. In general, a metropolitan area is a region with a main city at its center and adjacent communities that are all connected by social and economic factors. The largest metro areas in the U.S. are New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. In 2019, there were more women than men in all three of those areas, but Jackson, Missouri was the metro area with the highest share of female population.