Why are eating disorders more prevalent in women than men?

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I think some of it is because women are more emotional, they may be more prone to depression and anxiety than men, there may be more cases of abuse towards females than males and that can be linked.
It is a power thing. Eating disorders I am guessing is to do with power and having control. Something that abuse victims do not have.
I am sure alot of emotion, self esteem, self worth issues are all tied up with it, and women tend to have those complexes more than men.

I don't think eating disorders is all to do with body dismorphic disorder where the female sees herself so much bigger, fatter and unattractive than she really is and so feels she needs to lose weight, though I am sure that does play a big part in many cases.

It might start off as dieting to lose a few pound, and women are more prone to diet and be more weight conscious than men. And then things may escalate from there. They may like the attention they get when they lose the weight and so it becomes a compulsive thing to keep on doing it to feel better about themselves.

I am sure the media doesn't help either with skinny models and actresses and tabloids and mags always covering their weight gain and weight loss sagas. And the media defining what is beautiful and what is not and what is hot and what is not. The fashion industry creating clothes that don't go beyond a size 6. And even then that is a large size. Young girls/teens are the target for fashion, and so much focus is on what they look like.

It is so sad.

Women are more prone to depression for Hormonal reasons and when there's a eating disorder there's usally an underlying depression which may be the root of low esteem,a chemical imbalence or a combination.Woman are held to a higher standard when it comes to appearence while men tend give off a wateva persona if they don't measure up.

Honestly I think it is mostly due to the fact that particularly in American culture women are constantly being told, from the time that they are young girls, that it is better to be thin. If they are thin, they will get the cute guys, be popular etc etc etc. And, women are supposed to be thin their whole lives. The only time that it is "okay" for women to be fat is when they are pregnant. Beyond that .... thin is what is expected. Most women aren't able to maintain that without having an eating disorder

Men on the other hand are told that they need to look good, but that doesn't mean that they have to be ridiculously thin. Although, my brother in law wrestled when in high school and some of his stories (binging before a meet so you are in a higher weight class; or purging and eating almost nothing before a meet to get in a lower weight class) makes me think that there are more male eating disorders than we are aware of.

ne cause is nearly beyond argument: The cultural emphasis on body image has soaked into nearly every pore of what we see every day. While body image may be important to many men, it's a far more powerful influence on women.

Men don't always need to be fit to acquire most jobs, command respect from their peers, and appear attractive to women. On the other hand, women who are overweight (or have other "flaws" in appearance) often have limited choices because many men (and some women) write them off immediately.

So it might make sense for women to be more conscious of appearance in our culture, but why are eating disorders the result when this self-consciousness goes too far? Quite simply, it's considered feminine to be thin. This wasn't always the case, and it might change again (check About.com's Plus Size site, a helpful resource, for some perspective). But, too often, the only body shape that seems acceptable to many women is "thin."

A desire to be thinner in our culture doesn't always lead to an eating disorder. Many other factors, including genetic influences, contribute to an eating disorder's development. But when these other factors are present, the overvaluing of thinness in our society creates the environment in which an eating disorder can take root.
Sexism can't be helping the issue, as feminists have pointed out. In a review of feminist literature on eating disorders, Tara Eastlund presents competing (though equally grim) feminist opinions.
As Eastlund reports, some believe that an eating disorder represents a loss of power. According to this line of thinking, as women gain power in other places in society, they give it away in their bodies by becoming thinner
Another feminist perspective described in Eastlund's review is a theory that an eating disorder is a bid for more power rather than less, as a move away from a more developed feminine body is a move away from a "reproductive destiny" that is seen as "constraining and suffocating."
A study cited in December 2006 suggested that women respond to pictures of ideally-shaped women by eating less, and men respond to ideally-shaped men by eating more.
This result seems fairly predictable, but it seems to have been lauded as a significant finding. It would be, but ideally-shaped women and ideally-shaped men are hardly similar in size today. Even men who don't have bulky musculature still require some muscle definition to appear masculine.
Boil it all down, and women deal with far different expectations for their bodies than men do. Though men are beginning to deal with other body image problems, like muscle dysmorphic disorder, women have a much larger stake in conforming to norms imposed on them by others.

This is probably due to the pressure that men put on women making them feel like they always have to look better than they do.

Women are held at a higher standard for beauty.

because women are bigger whiners than men