Something blue rinse: rise of seventysomething bride

19 women married at age 75 or older

THEY say you can’t hurry love. And almost 20 women proved in 2016 that the right man is worth waiting for…

Nineteen women aged 75 or older tied the knot in that year, the Central Statistics Office revealed yesterday.

And nine of them married a suitor at least ten years younger than them.

The CSO also found the number of women in the country is booming. There were more than 2.4million women in Ireland on Census night – an increase of almost 92,000 or 4% on the previous head count in 2011.

There were 978 men and boys for every 1,000 women and girls in the State in April 2016, which means there were 53,009 more females than males.

The figures were released to mark 110th International Women’s Day yesterday.

Junior Justice and Equality Minister David Stanton said the day was dedicated to ‘acknowledging women’s achievements throughout history and across nations, celebrating the social economic, cultural and political achievements’.

According to Census 2016, there were 1,236,634 single women – of all ages – out there, an increase of 3% on 2011. There were also 148,617 widowed women which was more than the number of ladies who were separated (66,563) and divorced (60,563) combined. The number of divorcees increased 18% since the previous census.

Women were more likely to be married than single by the age of 33, while for men this happened at age 35.

However, women in the EU earned an average of 16% less than their male peers in 2016, according to official statistics agency Eurostat released this week.

‘For every euro that a man earned by the hour, a woman made an average of 84c,’ Eurostat said.

In Ireland, the most up-to-date data was from 2014 – when the pay gap was a little under 14%.

Worldwide, women earn on average 23% less than men.

There were 893,337 married women in Ireland in 2016, of which 3% were married for the second time. There were 450 female samesex marriages in 2016, and for the first time, a category for registered same-sex civil partnership was included on the census form in Census 2016.

‘Looking at marriage data, we can see that in 2016 there were 19 brides aged 75 years or older. Of these, nine married grooms who were at least ten years younger.

‘After Census 2016, we saw there were 372 female centenarians; that is, ladies at 100 years or older, an increase of 11% on 2011.

‘In general, women were better educated than men in April 2016. In all 43.2% of females aged 15 and over had a third level qualification, compared with 40.7% of males. Among those aged 25 to 39, women tended to stay in education longer than men,’ said the CSO.

Female life expectancy has bloomed over the decades.

In 1926 female life expectancy was 57 years and eight months.

But between then and 2011 there was an increase of almost 25 years or 43%. Life expectancy now for women is 82 years and 10 months compared to 78 years and five months for men.

There were 63,897 births in 2016 of which 31,078 were female.