Why is it Women Who File for Divorce?

An Explanatory Model and Empirical Test

on French Data

Jean-François Mignot

Laboratoire de sociologie quantitative (CREST / INSEE)Observatoire sociologique du changement (Sciences Po / CNRS)

SummaryObservation

In most societies and couples, it is mostly women (not men) who file for divorce

QuestionWomen lose the most in divorce, so why do they file?

SuggestionIt’s the type of marital dissatisfaction women feel

that leads them (not men) to file for divorceEmpirical test

data from a French national sample of divorced women between 1970-1982 (N=1,888)

It’s mostly women who file for divorce…

Whatever the period:18th century: Massachusetts (US), Cambrai

(France), Neuchâtel (Switzerland)19th century: Massachusetts & New Jersey

(US), France, Belgium, Germany (Baden & Saxe), Finland, Romania

Exceptions: Scotland (from 1684 to 1830, & in the 19th century)England and Wales from 1861 to 1920, i.e. as long

as women’s access to divorce was legally restricted

% of divorce petitions filed by the wife

1830 1850 1870 1890 1910 1930 1950 1970 1990 20100%

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France England-Wales

It’s mostly women who file for divorce…

Whatever the country in the 20th century:US, Australia, England-Wales, Scotland, Sweden,

Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, West Germany, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Greece

Czech Republic, Poland, Soviet Union & maybe RussiaChina, Japan, Singapore (whether Christian, Hindu or

Muslim divorces)Brazil, MexicoTogo, Mali, South Africa

Exceptions: Italy in the 1970s, Switzerland since the legal reform of 2002

It’s mostly women who file for divorce…

Data: divorces in France in the 1970s, in Mexico in 2000-2005, in Poland in 2005Whatever the spouses’ ages or marriage

durationWhatever the spouses’ educational levels or

social classWhether the wife works or notWhatever the couple’s number of childrenWherever they reside: big or small city, or

countryside

It’s mostly women who initiate breakups

Women do not just file for divorce, they also initiate breakups:They are less satisfied with their marriageThey think about the possibility of filing for

divorce earlier than menMore than men, they initiate the discussions

that lead to filing for divorce in married couples

More than men, they initiate separation in cohabiting couples

Women lose more in divorceFrom a financial viewpoint

Divorce lowers women’s living standard more than men’s

From the viewpoint of their P(remarriage)Divorce lowers women’s probability of

remarriage more than men’s

QuestionWomen lose more in divorce than men

financially and for remarriageAnd still women file for divorce more often

than menWhatever the period, the country & the type of

couple

How come? Are women irrational? And men?

An explanatory modelThe literature on divorce initiative pinpoints

several mechanisms affecting divorce filing, but none of these mechanisms can explain

why in general it is mostly women who file for divorce

Need for a new model

An explanatory model IIIn marital relationships,

men place more importance than women on sexual gratification, i.e. frequency of sexual relations (Schmitt et al. 2001; Schmitt 2003) When dissatisfied in their relationship, men’s best solution for

(sexual) dissatisfaction consists of complementing the relations they have with their spouse with extracurricular relations → men don’t initiate divorce

women place more importance than men on emotional gratification, i.e. intensity of emotional relationships (Thompson & Walker 1989) When dissatisfied in their relationship, women’s best solution

for (emotional) dissatisfaction consists of leaving their spouse in hopes of finding one more fulfilling → women do initiate divorce

An explanatory model IIIThis model fits with the literature on women and

men’s differences in preferencesmen are less satisfied than women with the sexual

dimension of their relationship (Christopher and Sprecher 2000; Thornton and Young-Demarco 2001), they commit adultery more often(Christopher and Sprecher 2000), and their ideal number of sexual partners is greater than women’s (Schmitt 2003; for a review of this literature, see Schmitt et al. 2001)

women are less satisfied than men with the emotional dimension of their relationship (Rhyne 1981)

An explanatory model IV: predictionsWhen dissatisfied,

Women initiate a break-upMen have extracurricular sexual relations

When initiating the breakup, women do it for emotional reasons → when there is emotional dissatisfaction in the couple,

it’s more often than average women who should initiate the breakup

When having extracurricular relations, men do it for sexual reasons → when one’s spouse gets old (less desirable), it’s more

often than average men who should have extracurricular relations

An empirical test of this modelData: INED survey "Women and the

Changing Family,“ with 1,888 couples who divorced in France between 1970 and 1982

Variables of interest:Legal: “Who between you and your ex-husband

initiated the petition for divorce?”Nonlegal: “Who between you took the initiative

to no longer live together?”

An empirical test of this model: descriptive statistics

Divorce initiative: 2/3 of divorce petitions for divorce were initiated by women (18.1% by men, 15.3% by both), & 69.4% of separations were initiated by women (18.5% by men, 12.1% by both spouses)

Extracurricular relations: at the time of separation the man "knew" another woman in 43.3% of couples, whereas the woman only "knew" another man in 14.2% of couples divorce petitions filed by women are more often motivated by misconduct

(adultery) than those filed by men, & the spouse found guilty of having committed misconduct in the marriage is more often the man than the woman

Impact of emotional dissatisfaction: the fact that the spouses no longer get along (before their divorce) increases the % of petitions filed by women (from 54% to 67%) and reduces the % of petitions filed by men (from 31% to 17%)

Impact of sexual dissatisfaction: a wife's aging increases a husband's relative chance to have extracurricular sexual relations (from 74% to 87%) more than a husband's aging increases a wife's relative chance (22% to 25%)

An empirical test of this model: multivariate models I

Discrete-time event-history models of the initiation of divorce and separation

"all things being equal," the fact that the spouses no longer get along (proxy for decreasing emotional gratification) multiplies by 2.759*** the chances that the woman (not the man) files for divorce

"all things being equal," the fact that the couple no longer gets along multiplies by 2.899*** the chances that the woman (not the man) initiates the separation

Controls: ages of the spouses, period, length of marriage, woman working outside the home or not, man unemployed or not

An empirical test of his model: multivariate models II

Logistic regression models for which spouse knows a person with whom s/he intended to live at the time of separation (proxy for adultery)

Controls: ages of the spouses, period, length of marriage, woman working outside the home or not, man unemployed or not

"all things being equal," a spouse’s aging (proxy for decreasing sexual desirability and activity) increases the probability that the man rather than the woman will engage in extracurricular sexual relationseach additional year that a wife ages tends to multiply by 1.220***

the chances that the man (not the woman) knows at separation a person with whom he intends to live, whereas each additional year that a husband ages "only" tends to multiply by 1.133*** the chances that the woman (not the man) knows at separation a person with whom she intends to live

ConclusionThesis: women (not men) file for divorce because …

the type of marital dissatisfaction women tend to feel (emotional) leads them to wish to replace their unsatisfying spouse, while

the type of marital dissatisfaction men tend to feel (sexual) leads them to wish to add a lover to their unsatisfying spouse

Empirical test on France, 1970-1982When a couple no longer gets along it is women (even more

than usually) who initiate divorce & separation → emotional dissatisfaction indeed leads women, not men, to file

When a couple ages it is men (even more than usually) who have extracurricular relations → sexual dissatisfaction indeed leads men to not file for divorce but have extracurricular relations

Thank you

Spouse who filed for divorce, based on whether or not the spouses still got along at the time of divorce

The spouses still got along The spouses no longer got along0%

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BothThe husbandThe wife

% of “adultery” at separation committed by the man or the woman, by the age of their spouses at separation

15-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 ≥ 450%

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Percentage of adultery committed by the husband rather than by the wife, by age of the wife at separationPercentage of adultery committed by the wife rather than by the husband, by age of the husband at separation

Spouses who, at the time of separation, knew "another person with whom they intended to live"

Neither spouse46%

Only the husband40%

Only the wife11%

Both spouses3%