Women sleep better than men - but experience the opposite

Key Points:

• A study from Karolinska Institutet found that women rate their sleep quality poorer than men despite objective measures showing women sleep better, with fewer awakenings and more deep sleep.
• Men tend to underestimate the number of times they wake up during the night, while women recall these awakenings more accurately, influencing their perception of sleep quality.
• When excluding men with short, barely noticeable awakenings, the difference in perceived sleep quality between genders disappears, suggesting men’s more positive view may be due to less awareness of brief awakenings.
• Sleep quality differences between men and women become more pronounced with age, as men experience greater declines in deep sleep and more awakenings, yet women continue to report poorer sleep quality.
• The study measured sleep over a single night and involved 476 participants aged 29–85 in Sweden, using polysomnography and self-reports; it was published in Sleep Advances and funded by Swedish research foundations.