Does gender affect reflexes

Humanity is a sexually dimorphic species, meaning males and females of the species have different shapes and physical (and sometimes mental) abilities. This dimorphism can easily be observed in the differences between male and female voices, men being more hairy than women, men typically being larger, and of course men and women having different reproductive organs.

Another way that male and female sexes diverge is in reaction times. As this study found, the contraction rate between men and women is the same once contraction begins, but men's muscles begin contracting sooner. And interestingly, in a shooting test, men were able to aim and fire at a target more quickly than women, but women were more accurate once they had taken aim. Also, interestingly enough, women's reaction times were lengthened by dehydration, whereas men's were shortened.

Many of the studies measuring reaction time use a simple ruler test where they drop a ruler and measure how far the ruler travels before the participant catches the ruler. Though gender does affect these tests, another variable that commonly affects observed reaction times is strength. Simply put, the stronger you are relative to your body weight, the faster you can move your body to react. In real-world displays of reflexes in action, men and women generally diverge further in their observed response times because men have higher proportional strength than women (40 - 50% in the upper body, and 20 - 30% in the lower body) because of higher muscle density, likely due to differences in the way that male and female bodies process caloric intake, i.e., men convert more calories into muscle and circulating energy where as women convert more calories to fat.