by examining the case records of 1,000 patients at the clearing house for mental defectives, leta hollingworth determined that, although men outnumbered women in the clearing house, the ratio of men to women decreased with age. hollingworth explained this to be the result of men facing greater societal expectations than women. consequently, deficiencies in men were often detected at an earlier age, while similar deficiencies in women might not be detected because less was expected of them. therefore, deficiencies in women would be required to be more pronounced than those in men in order to be detected at similar ages.