To take your chance in the thick of a rush, with firing all about,
Is nothing so bad when you've cover to 'and, an' leave an' likin’ to shout;
But to stand an’ be still to the Birken’ead drill is a damn tough bullet to chew,
An’ they done it, the Jollies - 'Er Majesty’s Jollies - soldier an' sailor too!
Their work was done when it 'adn’t begun; they was younger nor me an' you;
Their choice it was plain between drownin' in 'eaps an' bein' mopped by the screw,
So they stood an' was still to the Birken'ead drill, soldier an' sailor too!

Extract from Soldier an Sailor too by Rudyard Kipling

With the sinking of the Costa Concordia do you think the Birkenhead drill (women and children first) still stands true today?

The subtitle of The Myth of Male Power is "Why Men are the Disposable Sex." This is a key tenet of Farrell’s philosophy. Historically, he says, both sexes were disposable in the service of survival: women risked death in childbirth; men risked death in war. However, Farrell notes, there is a key difference: women's disposability emanated more from biology; men's required socialization.[6]
Farrell asks, "how does a society get its sons to compete to die?" Farrell's thesis about socialization for male disposability is that virtually every society that survived did so by training a cadre of its sons to be disposable—for example, in war and in work (coal miners; firefighters). Successful socialization required rewarding boys with social "bribes of approval." These bribes included being labeled "hero," giving them promotions and "Purple Hearts" for risking their lives, and the love of women. This love leads to children, who are then socialized by parents who reinforce the cycle.[7]
The Myth of Male Power proposes that, because death is not particularly healthy, this cycle creates a "paradox of masculinity": what it has taken to create a society that is healthy creates boys and men who are unhealthy.[8]
Perhaps Farrell's most controversial contribution to gender politics is The Myth of Male Power's confrontation of the belief that patriarchal societies make rules to benefit men at the expense of women. Farrell cites hundreds of examples to the contrary, such as male-only draft registration not benefiting men at the expense of women; or men constituting 93% of workplace deaths; or being expected to risk sexual rejection, pay on dates, and buy women diamonds. Once married, rules made by men are more likely to lead to men losing children and their home after divorce--what he cites as another example of male disposability. Farrell contends that nothing is more telling about who has benefited from "men's rules" than life expectancy and suicide rates--and men lose in both of these categories.[9]

@Nick: Seems you and me are on the same boat .Just to bad that it's the sinking one

@PG: Ahh thanks PG but I will gladly give my spot on the life boat for you even if I was there before you.

@Alysaria: Well women already out number men so the loss of a few hundred or thousand won't make such a big difference to the big picture I think. 

Just to ad something that I think might also play a part. When the HMS Birkenhead sank the men on board were sailors and soldiers who got the order to let the women and children go so that the lifeboats wouldn't be swamped. So they might just have been following orders. This wasn't meant for civilian men. And seeing as today chivalry is all but dead I just wondered if it still has relevance today?

  China tried that, and look what happened. 

@Alysaria: Well the Russians have more girls being born than boys (thanks to all the Vodka)and I know in 3rd world countries women out number men. And I am not talking about over 60s.Because in these countries the lifespan isn't all that high. 

But you thinking we men are expendable. I knew you had no heart.  

Where Did All The Russian Men Go?
Historic events have contributed to the dwindling male population in Russia and Ukraine, beginning with the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, then the civil war and devastating famines of 1932 and 1933. Russia lost over 20 million soldiers in World War II. Today, the population decline boils down to Russians dying young and having fewer children. The average life expectancy of Russian men is barely 60, which is one of the lowest of the developed countries.

Women outnumber men substantially in Europe, the US, and Japan, where, despite the persistence of various types of bias against women (men having distinct advantages in higher education, job specialization, and promotion to senior executive positions, for example), women suffer little discrimination in basic nutrition and health care. The greater number of women in these countries is partly the result of social and environmental differences that increase mortality among men, such as a higher likelihood that men will die from violence, for example, and from diseases related to smoking. But even after these are taken into account, the longer lifetimes enjoyed by women given similar care appear to relate to the biological advantages that women have over men in resisting disease. Whether the higher frequency of male births over female births has evolutionary links to this potentially greater survival rate among women is a question of some interest in itself. Women seem to have lower death rates than men at most ages whenever they get roughly similar treatment in matters of life and death.

The fate of women is quite different in most of Asia and North Africa. In these places the failure to give women medical care similar to what men get and to provide them with comparable food and social services results in fewer women surviving than would be the case if they had equal care. In India, for example, except in the period immediately following birth, the death rate is higher for women than for men fairly consistently in all age groups until the late thirties. This relates to higher rates of disease from which women suffer, and ultimately to the relative neglect of females, especially in health care and medical attention.2 Similar neglect of women vis-à-vis men can be seen also in many other parts of the world. The result is a lower proportion of women than would be the case if they had equal care—in most of Asia and North Africa, and to a lesser extent Latin America.

This pattern is not uniform in all parts of the third world, however. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, ravaged as it is by extreme poverty, hunger, and famine, has a substantial excess rather than deficit of women, the ratio of women to men being around 1.02. The “third world” in this matter is not a useful category, because it is so diverse. Even within Asia, which has the lowest proportion of women in the world, Southeast Asia and East Asia (apart from China) have a ratio of women to men that is slightly higher than one to one (around 1.01). Indeed, sharp diversities also exist within particular regions—sometimes even within a particular country. For example, the ratio of women to men in the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana, which happen to be among the country’s richest, is a remarkably low 0.86, while the state of Kerala in southwestern India has a ratio higher than 1.03, similar to that in Europe, North America, and Japan.

Well I live in a 3rd world country( as well as lived in a number of others) surroundeed by other 3rd world countries on a continent made up out of 3rd world countries. So I think I understand what is fair to say about the factors and the ratios involved ( seeing as I actually have first hand knowledge of most of those nasty things you metioned )
And the Russian reply wasn't based on historical events but based on the fact that due to the amount of vodka consumed by russian men it has a negative effect on the Y chromosomes sperm sells due to the fact that they are more sensative to the chemicals in the body than the X chromosome. So more girls are being born.

You do realise that this thread is about sinking ships and not popluation control?

@PG: Ahh thanks PG but I will gladly give my spot on the life boat for you even if I was there before you.

Alysaria. I think that is more a 

A recent study theorized that your sense of etiquette might vary with the speed of the ship's sinking.[4] Frey, Savage, and Torkler's study[5] found that more women and children survived the sinking of the Titanic than on the Lusitania, where more young men and women survived. The Lusitania sank in 18 minutes, whereas the Titanic sank in 2 hours, 40 minutes, and the study concluded that selfish behavior dominates when people are under pressure to survive, whereas social norms and status hold when the pressure is less evident, causing those who behave like gentlemen to end up losing their lives. In addition, the chivalrous behavior of British men has been posited as a reason for why more of them lost their lives on the Titanic than American men, who were thought to display more individualistic behavior.[6] Make of that what you will!

That is very interesing Alysaria. So it would seem that not all men are actulally "made equal", it might be more based on the society one grows up in and its values even if it does seem on the surface to be similar to others.