Ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics released collected data about women.
The bureau reported that at the end of 2022, approximately 4,859,600 women lived in Israel, of which 26.8% were 14 years-old or younger, 59.5% were aged 15-64 and 13.7% were 65 or older.
Muslim women first marry at an earlier age than girls of other religions — 22.8 years-old among Muslim women, 25.2 among Jewish women, 25.6 among Druze women and 26.8 among Christian women.
The bureau’s findings indicated that Israeli women are waiting longer to have children. The average age of women giving birth increased to 30.6 – about one year and seven months more than the average age in 2000. The average age of women at first birth increased to 27.8 – about two years and one month more than the age in 2000.
Around 180,900 women gave birth in 2021. The average number of children a woman in Israel will give birth to during her lifetime (total fertility rate) is 3.00 children, higher than the average in OECD countries (1.59).
As of 2022, approximately 1.19 million Israeli women (35%) are mothers of children up to the age of 17. Around 90% of the mothers live with a partner while the rest head single-parent families.
The bureau reported that In 2021, the life expectancy of Israeli women is 84.6 years, compared to 80.5 years for men.
Among twelfth grade students, the rate of eligibility for a matriculation certificate among girls is higher than the rate among boys – 75.7% compared to 66.4% in 2021, respectively.
During the academic year of 2021-2022, women made up 55.1% of university students.
In the years 2014-2021, an average of 1,139 Israeli and foreign female PhD researchers participated in post-doctoral studies each year.
Regarding women in the workforce, the bureau found that the employment rate of women in 2022 was 57.9%, compared to 64.0% among men. The bureau added that 68.3% of working women were in full-time jobs, defined as 35 hours per week, or more, while 31.7% worked part-time. In addition, 9.6% of working women, 196,000 were self-employed.
