In the perfect world where you have time to decide exactly what is going to happen then it should be more a case of elderly people or those with severe illness's first, given the rates of old people on cruises and the general % of the populace which has suffered some degree of cancer or in my own case Type 1 Diabetic it would make more sense for the ill to stay on the ship and go down with it, if not for the fact that healthy young adults would go on to live a longer life then for the sake of if I'm on a life raft for a number of days without both sugar and insulin to keep my blood glucose level balanced then I'm going to pass into a coma and not be able to mind the child in the raft with me.
In the real world tho, no one would probably volunteer their spot on a life raft to die over a healthy adult since in times of panic people will claim things like drug use or criminal behavior in the past should mean young adults should die for elderly as a sign of respect for what they've given the world (not paying attention to the fact that old people could have been criminals or that every old person today was alive during the 60s)
TL:DR it should be decided by what they have left to live for and who are capable of minding the child for the period while they await rescue, gender should have nothing to do with that in the slightest.
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