In 2017, the average life expectancy of Israeli women stood at 84.6 years old, almost four years longer than the 80.7 years life expectancy of Israeli men.
By EYTAN HALONCouples kiss during a mass wedding at coastal city of Larnaca(photo credit: REUTERS/YIANNIS KOURTOGLOU)
Women in Israel’s Arab and Jewish sectors are marrying at a later age than a decade ago, the Central Bureau of Statistics, ahead of International Women’s Day 2019, has revealed.According to data gathered in 2017, 51.5% of Jewish women aged 25 to 29 years old were married, compared to 74.4% among Arab women. This represents a significant decrease from data compiled in 2006, when 55.1% of Jewish women and 79.6% of Arab women in the same age group were married.Among women aged 45 to 49 years old, 9.5% of Jewish women said they were single, compared to 11.9% of Arab women. A decade earlier, only 5.9% of Jewish women were single, compared to 10.5% of Arab women.In 2016, nearly 53,000 women married, with approximately 90% of them marrying for the first time.The average age when women have their first child has also increased during the last decade, rising from 26.8 years old in 2006 to 27.6 in 2017. Of those born to Jewish mothers in 2017, 5.3% were born to single women, double the number recorded twenty years ago.In 2017, the average life expectancy of Israeli women stood at 84.6 years old, almost four years longer than the 80.7 years life expectancy of Israeli men.Accordingly, 36.4% of women above the age of 65 were widows, compared to only 10.1% of widowers among the senior male population.Not only do women outperform their male counterparts in terms of life expectancy, they also outperform men in their matriculation studies. Some 70.9% of girls graduated high school with a matriculation certificate, compared to 59.2% of boys in 2017.The gap between girls and boys is even more pronounced in the Arab education sector, with 72.4% of girls successfully completing their matriculation studies, compared to 51.6% of boys.During the 2017/18 academic year, more than 185,000 higher education students were women, representing 59% of the total student body. Four decades ago, during the 1969/70 academic year, women constituted just 43.3% of the country’s students.
In the world of work, the data show that 90% of employed women are satisfied with the nature of their work. Only 56%, however, are satisfied with their income.In 2017, the average monthly woman’s wage stood at NIS 8,188 ($2,262), compared to NIS 11,928 ($3,296) earned by men on average – a difference of 31.4%.While the significant wage difference is partly explained by men working more hours than women (44.9 weekly hours, compared to 37), the wage gap still stands at 15.8% when compared on an hourly basis.When it comes to happiness, however, there is little difference between Israel’s sexes. Approximately 89% of both men and women are satisfied with their lives.
