Digit ratio and risk taking in post-menopausal Finnish women

• Prenatal testosterone is thought to masculinise risk-taking.
• We investigated health and sexual risk and 2D:4D in post-menopausal women.
• 2D:4D did not relate to alcohol or nicotine consumption in our sample.
• 2D:4D did not relate to lifetime sexual partners in our sample.
• Prenatal hormones may not affect risk taking at an older age.

Although an indicator of prenatal testosterone (PT), 2D:4D ratio, has been extensively studied in the domain of financial risk taking, other domains of risk have received less attention. It is thought that elevated levels of PT relate to more masculinised behaviours, including increased risk taking propensity. In this study, we report negative findings with regards to health (average weekly drinking and daily smoking) and sexual (lifetime number of sexual partners) risk in a sample of post-menopausal Finnish women (N = 146–262). Our results suggest that PT may not masculinise health and sexual risk taking in women, at least at an older age.