Women can hear better than men, according to a new study which found that hearing amplitude is more influenced by sex than age, and environment also plays a role in hearing.
The researchers found women showed an average of two decibels more sensitive hearing than men across all the populations studied.
The scientists found sex was the leading factor explaining differences in hearing sensitivity, with women having significantly more sensitive hearing than men.
The second most significant influence was the environment, which not only affected the response to volume but also the range of frequencies of sound perceived, they said.
The French and British researchers were surprised by the findings of their randomised controlled clinical trial, published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports on 26 March 2025.
Study co-author, Professor Turi King, director of the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath, collected study samples from UK participants during her previous role at the University of Leicester.
Hormones and cochlear anatomy
“We were surprised to find that women had two decibels more sensitive hearing across all the populations we measured, and this accounted for most of the variations between individuals,” she said.
“This could be due to different exposure to hormones during development in the womb, (or) due to men and women having slight structural differences in cochlear anatomy.
The researchers said hearing sensitivity was well known to decrease with age but little research had been done on the other biological and environmental factors that influenced it, such as sex, ear side, language, ethnicity and local environment.
The team, led by Dr Patricia Balaresque from the Centre for Biodiversity and Environmental Research (CRBE) in Toulouse, France, and including Professor King, conducted hearing tests in 450 people across 13 populations in five countries – Equador, England, Gabon, South Africa and Uzbekistan.
These populations were selected to capture a wide range of ecological and cultural contexts, including underrepresented rural and non-European groups.
They investigated the sensitivity of the cochlea, looking at how it transmitted brain signals in response to different amplitudes and frequencies of sound by measuring Transient-Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions (TEOAE).
Better hearing in the right ear
It was already well known that people generally have better hearing in their right ear compared with their left, they said, and that hearing usually declined with age.
They found that people living in forest areas had the highest hearing sensitivity and those living at high altitudes had the lowest.
Population, environment and language all significantly contributed to the variation in hearing across human groups but it wasn’t clear whether this was due to the whole body being affected by the environment or due to long-term adaptations to varying soundscapes, noise levels or exposure to pollution.
The researchers suggested that people living in forests could have higher sensitivity because they had adapted to soundscapes with lots of non-human sounds, where vigilance was essential for survival. Alternatively, it could be due to being exposed to lower levels of pollution.
People living at higher altitudes may have reduced sensitivity due to several reasons including the impact of lower atmospheric pressure on measurements, potential sound reduction in high altitude environments or physiological adaptations to lower oxygen levels, they said.
The team also found a difference between urban and rural populations, with those living in cities having a shift towards higher frequencies, possibly due to filtering out low frequency traffic noise.
“We know that hearing generally declines with age and that exposure to loud noise and chemicals such as tobacco smoke can damage hearing,” Professor King said.
“We wanted to investigate in more detail what factors shape our hearing and diversity of hearing sensitivities and see how our hearing has adapted to our local environment.
Brains are better at processing information
“As well as having higher hearing sensitivity, women also perform better in other hearing tests and speech perception, indicating that their brains are also better at processing the information.
“We don’t really know why this might be, but given the detrimental effect of noise on overall health such as sleep quality and increased cardiovascular disease, having more sensitive hearing in noisy environments may not always be a good thing.”
Dr Balaresque, who has a Master’s degree in evolutionnary genetics led the French study.
“Our findings challenge existing assumptions and highlight the need to consider both biological and environmental factors when studying hearing,” she said.
“Identifying drivers behind natural hearing variation will improve our understanding of hearing loss and individual differences in noise tolerance.”
Professor King added: “We know that humans are continuing to evolve so the next question is whether our hearing is able to change in response to different environments generally or whether there are genetic adaptations involved.”
Professor King, who has a Master of Science in molecular genetics, discusses the findings in more detail in the Milner Centre for Evolution podcast: How your sex and your environment affect your hearing.
