I wonder why the jump to hormonal reasons, there are so many other factors involved.
Could be that women tend to look after their health more, tend to be quicker to respond to indicators of poor health. behaviors over and above hormones.
Or there is more older women dying simply because they are a larger percentage of that population. Likewise more men may be dying simply because there is a larger percentage of males in the population, ok not that big a difference... to explain the higher death rate.