Recent awareness of cardiovascular diseases as a number one killer of the middle-aged women has prompted interest in gender related differences leading to heart failure (HF). Therefore, we evaluated cardiac function in female and male mice following myocardial infarction (MI) using the Millar pressure-volume (P-V) conductance system in vivo, at time points corresponding to early (2 wk), late compensatory hypertrophy (4 wk), and decompensation (10 wk) to HF. A significant deterioration of the load dependent and independent hemodynamic measurements occurred in both female and male mice during the early phase of hypertrophy. Later, compensatory hypertrophy was marked by a normalization of volumes to control levels in females compared to males. The most notable differences between genders occurred in the measurements of cardiac contractility during the decompensation to HF. In females, there was a significant improvement in contractility compared to males, which was apparent in the load independent measurements of preload recruitable stroke work (10 wk post-MI, female=48.7±8.0 vs. male=25.2±1.8 mmHg, p<0.05) and maximum dP/dt vs. maximum EDV (10 wk post-MI, female=359±58 vs. male=149±28 mmHg/sec/µl, p<0.05). Despite these differences, there were no differences in the heart weight to body weight ratio and infarct size between the genders. These data demonstrate that compensatory hypertrophy is associated with an improvement in contractility and a delayed decompensation to HF in females. However, compensatory hypertrophy in males appears to be undermined by a steady decline in contractility associated with decompensation to HF.