In terms of years, the drop wasn't 5x as much. In terms of % drop, the drop for males was some 7.7%, and for females, 3.2%.
Anyway, you can get the details from the CDC report I was referring to --
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_05/sr05_009.pdf
Table 5, life expectancy at birth, of that report has the ff, in part:
1990 -- M 63.8 F 74.3 1991 -- M 63.5 F 74.3 1992 -- M 62.0 F 73.8 1993 -- M 58.9 F 71.9
i.e., dropped by about 5 years for males between 1990 and 1993 and by about 2.4 years for females, i.e. about 2x.
For the sources of this difference, you might look at Table 9. Rise in death rate from heart disease went up about 20% for males, and 10% for females; increase from strokes by a smaller margin. But it seems that the rises that account for the difference were in pneumonia & influenza, suicides, and other external causes (you can check the int'l disease classification for the details on ths last item).
So maybe the men, more than the women, went out and got drunk, caught pneumonia, or committed suicide, or... But, still, suicide as a cause of death for women went up by some 20%, and pneumonia & influenza, by about 50%.
Take your pick: joy at the collapse led to a dionysian binge or was it the other way around... Either way, it was a dying matter.
kj