Women More Likely to Ask For Divorce: Know Why Here!

Why are women more likely to initiate a divorce than a breakup in unmarried settings?

A new survey found out that, based on the answers of 2,262 participants in the study, 69% of divorces had been initiated by women, while men initiated only 31%.

"But if men and women were living together without marrying, each gender was equally likely to initiate a breakup," Time reported.

The lead author of the research, Stanford University's Michael Rosenfield, noted that nearly all studies on the same subject "have shown that women are more likely to ask for divorce."

He believed that social scientists thought that the sensitivity of women to relationship highs and lows "would mean they were more likely to leave both marriages and non-marital unions."

However, previous research on the subject focused on marital divorces. Rosenfield's study, titled "How Couples Meet and Stay Together," had examined couples in both marital and nonmarital arrangements and compared both.

"The new study includes 2,262 adults, ages 19 to 64, who reported having opposite-sex partners in 2009. By 2015, 371 of the participants had broken up or gotten divorced," LiveScience noted.

"Women initiated 69 percent of the 92 divorces," the science news source said. "But there was no statistically significant difference between women and men when it came to nonmarital breakups, regardless of whether they were living together."

Rosenfield said that it's possible that women are less satisfied with their marital state of affairs because "they experience heterosexual marriage as constraining, oppressive, uncomfortable and controlling."

"I think that marriage as an institution has been a little bit slow to catch up with expectations for gender equality," Rosenfeld was quoted as saying. "On the other hand, I think that nonmarital relationships lack the historical baggage and expectations of marriage, which makes the nonmarital relationships more flexible, and therefore more adaptable to modern expectations, including women's expectations for more gender equality."

The study has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed publication,

In 2013, divorce statistics in the UK reflected a similar trend as the results in Rosenfield's study, as noted by The Telegraph. Based on the data provided by the Office of National Statistics, over half of the female-initiated divorces "are down to their other half's unreasonable behavior, which can be anything from unchecked boozing, physical abuse, wanton gambling, or that garden-variety mental cruelty you probably saw traces of at your last dinner party."

"On the other hand, it's possible that women are more likely to initiate divorce than men because in the divorce court, especially where children are involved, the odds are in the female's favour," the publication went on to say.

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