Happy International Women’s Day!

Of the many big and small inequalities, we cannot overlook the right of a woman to end a difficult marriage. While divorce may be common place and social acceptable for women today, it has not been that way in history.

Throughout modern time, divorce could only be granted if one spouse proved “fault” – usually either adultery or cruel treatment – in a court of law. Some states in the US went further and required that a divorce be approved by the state legislature!In order to have such a contested type of suit, in a male-dominated arena with male lawyers and male judges, a woman would first have to have the guts to tell her business in public, then she would have to find the financial mean to hire a (male) lawyer to handle her case. In the good-old-boy system that existed back then, she couldn’t be sure that the male lawyer she hired wasn’t one of her husband’s social buddies. In short, only women who had wealth could effectively get divorced. A woman who was from a lower socio-economic situation would be stuck in a bad marriage with a violent man without much recourse.

In the 1970’s, with the advancement of women’s equality, along came no-fault divorce. This means that a woman could just say she wanted a divorce, without having to “prove” anyone did something wrong, to get released from a bad marriage. She wouldn’t have to “air her laundry” in public. She wouldn’t have to prove that her husband had sex with the secretary. She wouldn’t have to document her bruises from the last beating he gave her.

California – and future President Ronald Regan – passed the first no-fault divorce statute in the United States in 1970. Most other states, including Texas followed suit shortly thereafter.  New York became the last state to pass no-fault divorce in 2010! (See Wikipedia on no-fault divorce.)

President Regan later regretted his favor for no-fault divorce because he felt that it weakened the institution of marriage, making it too easy to divorce. Statistics support his regreat:

• From 1960 to 1980, the divorce rate more than doubled — from 9.2 divorces per 1,000 married women to 22.6 divorces per 1,000 married women.
• While less than 20% of couples who married in 1950 ended up divorced, about 50% of couples who married in 1970 did.
• And approximately half of the children born to married parents in the 1970s saw their parents part, compared to only about 11% of those born in the 1950s.

(See W. Bradford Wilcox The Evolution of Divorce, Fall 2009, National Affairs.)

Many women who are now able to get out of bad marriages that they couldn’t have before would disagree with his regrets!

Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied divorce extensively, believes that the introduction of no-fault divorce benefits women. “It leads to a 30 percent decrease in domestic violence. Not only is it easier for the abused to escape their marriages, but potential abusers are also less likely to act because they’re aware that their spouses can leave them. No-fault divorce also makes women less likely to commit suicide.” (See Jamie Kapalko, No-fault divorce: Good for women?)

So, in honor of International Women’s Day, be grateful that you live in a country where you have the RIGHT divorce your husband for a good reason or no reason at all – just because you want to. Like many things… it is OUR choice for what’s best for us, not the government or a man or the church or whoever else wants to meddle. You get to decide whether to stay in your marriage or leave it.

 

See History of Divorce Law in the USA, History Cooperative.