How would the world change if,
all of a sudden,
every biological man disappeared?
I’d like to think that a world without men
would be the end of the human race.
Sadly, we’re not as important
as we sometimes think we are.
And women might not even
need us for reproduction.
Some female animals
can give birth by themselves.
It’s called parthenogenesis,
and it’s common in sharks and lizards.
These virgin births only happen
when there are no males
in the females' vicinity.
So how soon could
human females develop parthenogenesis?
Let me get back to human reproduction
without men in a moment.
Because before women could try
to reproduce without men,
they’d have to work hard to avoid
the total collapse of society.
Without men,
the world would lose about half its population and workforce.
It would be up to the women
to fill traditionally male jobs.
Could they?
Now, I believe 100% in a woman’s ability
to do any job that a man can do.
But women are still underrepresented in some crucial jobs.
That means they wouldn't have the training
to take over some male-dominated positions right away.
Fire season would get pretty bad.
So plane travel would become rare and expensive.
There’d be long wait times for surgeries.
Luckily, there would still be plenty of nurses.
But the biggest hurdle
the all-female world would have to overcome is that
Food would become more expensive and harder to find.
Rationing would be necessary
for the first couple of years.
Eventually, after years of training,
changing jobs and restructuring the world,
women would get a handle on things.
And a new era of world peace would begin.
According to some scientists,
men are more aggressive than women
because of their DNA.
If this is true,
then our hypothetical world with only females
would be more peaceful.
But others argue that men are
more violent because of culture,
societal roles and gender inequality.
If this is the case,
women would have just as much potential for violence as men do.
Maybe we could look at Bonobo apes to answer this question.
These apes share almost
99% of their DNA with us.
Females are the leaders in bonobo groups.
And it turns out that they're
much more peaceful lot
than the chimpanzee groups led by males.
But if two different groups of bonobos meet,
they fight viciously.
So maybe the world wouldn’t be
all peace and love with only a female population.
At least militaries around the world
would be a lot smaller.
The U.S. would have just 14.4% of its military left.
North Korea, on the other hand,
would dominate.
About 40% of its military is female.
It seems that women could do alright without men.
They couldn’t do that by themselves, could they?
Well, it wouldn't happen right away.
First, women would get pregnant
by using whatever is left in sperm banks.
That would give them time
to develop ways to reproduce without men.
In Japan, scientists successfully
converted the stem cells
from a female mouse into sperm cells.
Those sperm cells then impregnated another female mouse.
Humans are much more complex than mice.
So it would take a lot more experimentation
to perfect this technology for human use.
But if the women of the world perfected this technology,
babies could be born from two females.
And because women would be
partnering up to produce offspring,
you could see a return to
a "traditional family structure."
Now, it would be a different story if all men,
except for one, disappeared.
If you were the only man left in this Amazonian world,
what would happen to you?
Well, that’s a story for another WHAT IF.