Are Men More Likely To Stand On The Subway Than Women?

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In a bit of a shocker, it turns out that New York's gentlemen "do live up to cultural expectations regarding giving up seats to ladies and children."

That's according to a study released this week by the Transportation Research Board (TRB), based on observations of 1,919 commuters during winter 2011-2012. The paper contains lots of tidbits about the weird, sometimes counter-intuitive of New York subway riders, but it also found that men were about twice as likely as women to be found standing in subway cars. In "heavy load" cars, in which over 80 percent of available seats are taken, roughly one in four men stood, versus one in seven women.

In 2012, total ridership on the NYC subway system was 1.65 billion. If this ridership is roughly split by gender, as the TRB study found, then women stood on subways about 75 million fewer times than men last year. It might be a bit old-fashioned for men to give up their seats, but pretty much everyone agrees that pregnant people shouldn't have to stand. As of publication, only women seem to be able to get pregnant.