Women’s faces receive higher attractiveness ratings than men’s, including from female evaluators, though the difference lessens with age and nearly disappears by the eighties, according to researchers. The findings support a long-observed gender attractiveness gap reflected in historical descriptions of women as the fairer sex. Dr Eugen Wassiliwizky of the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics noted the effect holds across cultures and that women assign the highest scores to other women while rating men lowest. The study compiled data from 52 prior investigations covering 76 countries and more than 1.5 million ratings of 17,000 faces. On average, female faces outranked about 60 percent of male faces. The gap appeared largest in Western samples and persisted across sexual orientations. Self-ratings eliminated the difference. Structural traits contribute, as rounder female faces are generally preferred over more rectangular male ones. Published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the work suggests the pattern may stem from evolutionary factors rather than culture alone, though the authors caution against firm conclusions. The advantage for female faces declined steadily from age 18 and vanished near 80, coinciding with reduced structural differences between older male and female faces.
