Comparing to lean body mass is especially silly, since lean body mass is mostly a measure of the amount of muscle a body has total. And strength in any particular body part is mostly a measure of the muscle mass in that body part. So the statement that women have more leg strength per lean body mass than men is mostly just saying that what muscle women have tends to be more in their legs than for men. Or equivalently, that women have proportionately less upper body muscle. So the same actual fact that leads to a statement about womens’ legs being strong could just as easily be restated as saying that their arms are weak.
Exactly right Chronos.
Hence how it is a bit contrived, merely stating that women tend to have more of their lean tissue (and those of their strength) in their lower bodies than do men. Their lower body muscles are not stronger per unit of muscle mass and per unit body weight they are not as strong (due to greater body fat percent off-setting it).
Again, records are not reflective of the typical, average, median, or mean of either gender.
It seems as though you agree with me. Perhaps I did not express myself clearly. Where exactly do you think I was being silly, and why was it silly?
I forget the guy’s name, but a weightlifter and orthopedic MD who ~40 years ago wrote a column for Strength and Health magazine said that the correlation between muscle size and muscle strength was relatively low. That would help explain not only the differing Male-Female bodyweight coefficients, but also the drastic difference between same sex competitors in the same weight classes: an Olympic Gold medalist probably lifts 100lb more than the last-place finisher, and being in the same weight class their muscle masses could not be too far apart.
My point was that using world records held for the squat as telling anything about what relative strength is of most or average women’s compared to men’s legs is silly, even if the squat was pure representation of lower leg strength, which it is not. Which is not to say the conclusion is wrong, or that a metric of strength per unit bodyweight (a bodyweight coefficient) is a poor metric.
Women, on average, are relatively stronger in their legs than their upper bodies in comparison to men. That’s really the factoid that the meme of female leg strength originates from. Women, on average according to the data we have, at any same relative point on the normal curve for gender, at any same BMI, at any same weight, at any same relative fitness level, have relatively less of their total body weight as muscle than men so per unit body weight they are overall weaker, even when just looking at leg strength. The small increase in muscle distribution legward does not offset the lesser amount of total muscle and the greater percent of fat.
Now maybe the claim could be that the quality of the muscle is different, that female muscle behaves differently per unit mass or cross sectional area than does male muscle. And it turns out that that claim may be true … but favoring more strength in males and faster recovery with greater fatigue resistance in females, but even that with the price of more body fat to carry around. Makes one guess that the gap in elite athletic performance will close fastest in distance swim events.
Strength at any particular task is indeed more than muscle mass. It is type of muscle fibers and how effectively the individual motor units fiber in the exact order and intensity required for the specific task. Hence protocols for muscle hypertrophy are not exactly the same as those recommended to maximally increase strength performance (especially as defined by performance on specific lifts).
You think it’s silly, I think it is a reasonable inference.
Close enough, and the only source of data that I know of. If you have a source for average men and women let’s see the numbers.
We do agree on something.
I think I agree except in that elite female athletes may be an exception.
I think I agree.
Is there any reason to believe that the n is the same … i.e. that the number of females attempting to become world class lifters is as large of a representation of the potential best as it is for males? (Or is it more likely that more of the potential male world class lifters try the sport than do females?)
Is there any reason to believe that female entering the sport get the exact same level and quality of support as do males entering?
Is there any a priori reason to believe that the variation about the mean is the same between the two populations? (Without that knowledge there is no way to know that one population does not have a higher mean value with a narrow standard of deviation while the other has a lower mean but a much larger standard of deviation. In that case the second population, with the lower mean but much higher standard of deviation, will produce the outliers on each tail, even with the same size populations being measured.)
The source I cited was of more average subjects male and female and demonstrated that females were overall less strong, had their muscle mass and strength both greater in their lower extremities.
If you want a larger one here is one looking at both genders across a variety of ages (“Six hundred fifty-four subjects (346 men and 308 women, aged 20–93 yr), who were already enrolled in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging”), including some nice comparisons of peak torque at knee extensors in both concentric and eccentric activity by age per unit thigh fat-free mass. And consistent with the muscle differences referenced above, males are stronger per unit fat-free mass in the legs than females are (on all measures until 70 and then females cross over for eccentric strength only).
No elite female athletes are not the exception. I can get the original studies but this Washington Post graphic may be good enough. A typical female elite athlete will be about 16% body fat and a typical male elite athlete will be about 8%. The difference even hold true (at smaller numbers for each) for marathon runners.
TL; DR response:
In what sense of the word “Strength”?
Ability to perform work (in the sense of Physics, back off) or structural strength?
The pelvis and (IIRC) hip joints are different - that may lead to a conclusion that the female leg can withstand greater compressive loads compared to a male leg of the same bone size.
Addressed in reply #58: “the significance of sample size diminishes rapidly with increase, so the larger male pool of people who self-select for weightlifting may not provide a better basis for generalization than the admittedly smaller female pool.”
I have a hunch not, but hunches are not valid reasons…
…and even granting the hunch provides no basis for granting that the difference is great enough to significantly affect relative performance.
Then it supports what I have been saying all along.
Ditto.
Thank you for the informative graphic which is largely corroborated by this cite: Body composition of elite American athletes. Note, however, that women attain a low of 10.1 % in the sprints, where they do not have to make weight. I would like to see event-specific numbers for male and female weight lifters since they do have to make weight, and the numbers for female marathoners would also be interesting.
Now, we seem to agree in our opinions of the issue raised by OP: women’s legs are both relatively and absolutely weaker than men’s. I do not intend to continue this conversation unless something really provocative comes up.
The only point of contention was that this is GQ not IMHO … ideally responses should actually be based on facts that address the op as directly as possible.
Bodybuilders (notably not tested for steroid use)
Best I can find for distance running isa second hand source:
hey
I am not trying to argue with men that females have stronger legs but I was searching for an answer to my question regarding gender factor in 6 minute walk test that assigns a factor of “1” to females and “0” to males. The full formula for VO2max is: 70.161 + (0.023 × distance) - (0.276 × Weight) - (6.79 × sex) - (0.193 × resting HR) – (0.191 x age). The factor implies that female are able of walking more than men and I am not saying that I like that so I am looking for an answers. As a side not I will just add that my leg press performance was way over 100% over that of my male colleagues 
I have played and refereed many co-ed soccer games and , even with the same leg length, the female will win every hip check.
If she is shorter than the guy, he is gonna eat dirt.
Don’t know if it is strength or talent but don’t play if hip checking is being allowed.
You may ask how I know… Bawahahaha
That likely has more to do with center of mass than it does leg strength.
Look this link to see Weightlifting Strength Standards for men and women.
I’d like to see a study that compares strength in various exercises rather than just pure muscle mass.
I’ve found in many cases that I can easily outperform an athletic woman on leg presses, but even an average-trained woman could pop my skull like a grape between her thighs.
Most women have more legs than the average man.
Most men also have more legs than the average man. But the average number of legs is probably higher for women than for men.
If I’m reading this correctly it’s saying that women’s leg muscles are stronger in relation to other muscles in their body.
If they were stronger then men then they would be able to lift more weight.
I know at the gym, most of the leg exercise machines seem to be occupied by mostly women.
So it may be a case of women tend to focus on their legs more where as men to focus on the upper body.
Proportionally their legs are much stronger compared to their upper bodies, due to having much weaker arms. But they’re still much weaker on average in the lower body than males.
The very best female squatters in my local gym can do about 185+ lbs for reps, one does 315+ but she’s an enhanced powerlifter… Maybe less than 4 women in total that I’ve seen at the same gym for the last 8 years.
The average male can probably get to a 275-315 lbs squat in the first year with adequate training/food. Even when factoring in the differences in size, and the bias that many women have against lifting heavy, there’s really no comparison.