When due attention is paid to the arguments supporting age disparity in relationships, we realize they hold no water. Rather, these arguments serve as a cloak for patriarchy and becomes the prime driver of women’s exploitation and subjugation. Men, as beneficiaries of this patriarchal system, do everything possible to dominate women, including pursuing and marrying younger women to widen the equality gap, even when unintentional and driven purely by social conditioning. 

In a patriarchal and gerontocratic society like Nigeria, where men are the head of the home and younger people are cautioned against questioning their elders, women in age gap relationships are subjugated on two fronts: both as the younger person and as a woman. Age difference, therefore, undermines women’s autonomy.  

I have observed my mother’s friends refer to my father as ‘sir’ and ‘oga’, immediately standing to greet him whenever he appears, their tone dripping with deference. This made me wonder whether the dynamic would change if the age gap were reversed. Would my mother’s older friends still greet my father with the same reverence if they outranked him in age?  

It is also common in Nigeria for married men, when caught in disputes with female strangers, to throw around the typical snide comment, ‘I have your type at home’. This statement reduces a wife to property while positioning the aggravating woman as her equivalent, both clearly beneath the man’s authority. The line between age and respect continues to blur through these spousal power dynamics. Damilola Onosowobo, an artist and feminist, shared her excitement about this conversation:  

I’m happy younger women are talking about this and recognizing the pattern. Age disparity in dating is rooted in the prejudice against women that insists we are children and not capable of making decisions on our own. Like how parents provide and protect their child, a husband takes a wife in to be a child. 

Age disparity fosters the idea that there needs to be a head in relationships, and most women embrace this because they are trying to rationalize submission. When a 35-year-old woman, for instance, insists she must date someone older, this is no longer about maturity but about legitimizing male authority. It becomes all about seeking relationships with older men because age provides a socially acceptable reason to defer to male authority. 

Age disparity in relationships fuels ageism and ageism toward women remains the bane of the feminist determination for a gender-equal society. The average middle-aged man sees his female peers as too old, used or damaged goods, disparaging them with phrases like ‘women age like milk.’ This is a slap in the face to older women’s hard-earned wisdom, experiences and contributions, reducing them to ghosts in a culture obsessed with youth. This is not just a romantic or social problem, it seeps into every part of life, from hiring practices to pay scales, where women are penalized for simply aging. 

Age also disparity creates generations of unhappy women. An Australian study from 2017  discovered that heterosexual couples with large age gaps had a faster decline in relationship satisfaction in their first six to ten years of marriage than similarly aged couples. While couples with an age gap of one to three years (with the man older than the woman) were the most common and had the greatest levels of satisfaction. A Korean study from 2015 also found that age gaps in long-term relationships could impact each partner’s likelihood of experiencing depression. In particular, it found that same-aged couples had the lowest rates of depression, while couples with an age gap of three years or more had slightly higher rates.  

Age disparity disempowers women. Women’s ability to make life choices is a major challenge in relationships with wide age gaps thus hindering women’s empowerment. Another study by Wisdom Akpan, and a fellow sociologist, Aboluwaji Daniel, examined the influence of spousal age difference on women empowerment in Nigeria using Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey 2018 dataset. It discovered that spousal age difference was found to influence women empowerment in Nigeria. Women who were the same age as their husbands and one to four years age gap were more likely to be empowered than women with a large spousal age gap.  

Age disparity negatively impacts women’s autonomy in relation to reproductive agency and spousal intimacy. French researchers, Magali Barbieri and Véronique Hertrich, argue that a wide spousal age difference only reduces women to reproductive organisms. Comparing 18 countries, the authors show that modern contraception is most widely used by couples with the smallest age difference. Conversely, women married to much older men always have a lower level of contraceptive use, and this illustrates their disadvantage in terms of individual decision-making power and the elaboration of shared conjugal projects. 

The lower a woman’s status is, the more susceptible she is to wide age gaps. Akpan’s study also highlights that women with no formal education had the highest mean spousal age difference 10.5, while women with higher education had the lowest mean age difference 7.3. The patterns of spousal age difference reveal that women in the poor category had the highest mean age difference of 10.1, while women in the rich category had the lowest mean age difference of 8.2. Additionally, women who married before age 20 had the highest mean spousal age difference of 10.2, while women who married at age 30 and above had the least mean spousal age difference of 5.8.  

Relationships with wide age gaps is a fertile soil for seeds of oppression. When one partner is older, wealthier, more experienced and holds more power, it creates a situation where the less powerful partner, often the woman, can easily be taken advantage of. It is important we collectively realize how this social setup, which might seem harmless at first, plays a significant role in perpetuating gender inequality.