You might be surprised to learn that blindness has a gender bias. “Most people aren’t aware that two-thirds of people who are blind are women,” says Assumpta Madu, M.D., an ophthalmologist at NYU Langone. “There’s a much larger preponderance to blindness and vision impairment for women compared to men.”
In fact, according to research from the University of Illinois at Chicago, women are at higher risk for certain kinds of glaucoma, which can cause blindness. Some experts think this is tied to estrogen, but there are other reasons women are more affected by blindness than men, ranging from longer lifespans to lifestyle habits (like sleeping in contacts—two-thirds of contact lens wearers are women, according to the CDC). And while some causes for vision loss aren’t preventable—as is the case with retinal detachment, when the light-sensitive tissue that communicates with the optic nerve in your brain detaches from its usual position without any clear provocation—other factors are preventable (or at least predictable).
Here’s what you need to know about why your eyesight may be at risk.