(Alternet) 3 July 2008:

Up to 67% of women frequently experience sleep problems but there’s not a great deal being done about it. For 75% of all the research upon sleep has been done upon male subjects.

When women are indeed studied directly the problems turn out to be much less psychological, the manner in which they are usually treated, and more physically or hormonally based. Certainly, the surges of estrogen during the monthly cycle make women more susceptible to the influences of cortisol, the main stress reaction hormone.

The real import of the story is that while we do indeed need to treat men and women equally, that means having to take account of, as in this medical sense, the occasions when they are in fact different.