Researchers from China analyzed activity data from more than 80,000 participants in the UK Biobank, a large British health database.
The group, with an average age of 60, wore accelerometers to track movement over several years.
According to recommendations from the World Health Organization, adults should aim for 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity, or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous exercise each week.
In the study, women who met that minimum target had about a 22 percent lower risk of heart disease after eight years.
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Men who exercised the same amount saw a 17 percent drop in risk. But the gender gap became even clearer among those who trained more than the recommended level.
Comparing men and women
The findings, published in Nature Cardiovascular Research, indicate that women may reach the same level of protection with roughly half the exercise time men need.
For example, women who trained around four hours per week (about 250 minutes) reduced their risk of heart disease by 30 percent.
Men needed close to nine hours weekly, about 530 minutes, to see similar benefits.
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The researchers also looked at 5,000 participants who already had heart disease.
In that group, women who exercised at least 150 minutes per week were three times less likely to die during the follow-up period than men who exercised the same amount.
The team suggested these findings might motivate more women to become physically active and could eventually inform gender-specific health guidelines.
The missing detail
The new research didn’t distinguish between moderate and high-intensity activity. That makes it hard to know whether women and men in the study were exercising at the same level of effort.
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Other explanations, such as hormonal differences or muscle composition, have been proposed by the Chinese research team, but doubts these theories have strong scientific support.
Sources: Forskning.no, the World Health Organization, Nature Cardiovascular Research