What is "women and children first"

phr. An exhortation to follow the principle of removing women and children from danger before men.

"Women and children first" (or to a lesser extent, the Birkenhead Drill) is a code of conduct whereby the lives of women and children are to be saved first in a life-threatening situation, typically abandoning ship, when survival resources such as lifeboats were limited.

While the phrase first appeared in the 1860 novel Harrington: A Story of True Love, by William Douglas O'Connor, the first documented application of "women and children first" occurred during the 1852 evacuation of the Royal Navy troopship . It is, however, most famously associated with the sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912. As a code of conduct, "women and children first" has no basis in maritime law. According to disaster evacuation expert Ed Galea, in modern-day evacuations people will usually "help the most vulnerable to leave the scene first. It's not necessarily women, but is likely to be the injured, elderly and young children." Furthermore, the results of a 2012 Uppsala University study said that the application of "women and children first" did not necessarily produce a survival advantage for women and children in practice.

"Women and children first" may refer to:

• Women and children first, a code of conduct sometimes applied in marine disaster evacuations in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
• Women and Children First, an album by hard rock band Van Halen
• Women and Children First, the second part of the double album Peccadillos by folk singer/songwriter Susan Herndon