concomitant

concomitant – adj - Existing or occurring with something else, often in a lesser way; accompanying; concurrent.

What follows has nothing to do with today's word, but I found it so interesting I had to pass it on.

As you know, women outnumber men in the developed world, and they've outnumbered them since about the 12th Century. Based on the available - and admittedly spotty and largely anecdotal - evidence, the situation was reversed right up until the High Middle Ages. What happened? It seems that women of child-bearing age need twice as much iron in their diets as men; pregnant women need three times as much. The typical diet in, for example, ancient Rome was heavy on grains, fruits, green vegetables, olives, and fish, with the result that most women were severely anemic by the time they were in their 20s, which in turn made them easy prey to any virus or bacterial infection that was making the rounds. Starting in the 11th Century West, beans and peas were introduced, rabbits were brought to France and England from Spain, and the supply of meat in general increased. Result: women at all levels were getting an iron-rich diet and living longer; in fact, they started outliving men.

One point is that women weren't being starved or worked to death by an oppressive, sexist patriarchy, and the drivel being promoted by the Womyns' Studies types is just that - drivel. Men and women were subsisting on the same diets; the effect on women was catastrophic, on men negligible. To drive the point a little further home, it wasn't until the 20th Century that anyone would have known what you were talking about if you had mentioned vitamins and minerals as they pertained to diet.