In the industrialized world, 85% of people over 100 years old are women. On average, women live 5-to-10 years longer than men. There are many theories about why this is including the theory that cardiovascular disease doesn't affect women until they are older, compared to men. This might possibly be because women are relatively iron-deficient and too much iron plays a role in the production of free radicals.
Cardiovascular disease is indeed one of the reasons but hardly the only one. Dr. Marianne Legato, Professor of Clinical Medicine at Columbia University, explains in the following video:
