Member Articles

Over time, half of marriages will end in divorce, and women pay a far higher price for divorce than men do. Women's standard of living falls by 36 percent after their marriages are disrupted, whereas men's standard of living rises by 28 percent.

Nor can women count on the law to make sure their children receive what they need. In the United States, nearly 70 percent of child support cases are in arrears; many mothers never collect on the money they have been awarded by the courts, and they often lack the financial resources to pursue a legal remedy.

Many women are also unaware of the changes in divorce law wrought by the equality revolution of the last few decades. A full-time homemaker used to expect longterm alimony to compensate for the loss of her breadwinner, but the law now assumes that women can take responsibility for themselves -- and expects them to do so. Legal experts say that today's divorcing homemakers are likely to be awarded "rehabilitative alimony," a short-term measure that assumes they can jump back into the labor force and start supporting themselves again. Their husbands may only be required to provide two or three years of support, and then the woman is on her own. And yet research shows that the majority of homemakers never manage to return to a full-time job with benefits. As a result, some find themselves unable to afford health insurance.

And divorce is only one of the challenges that may arise over the course of a normal lifetime. Few people have real job security these days; many men lose their jobs at one point or another, and families that depend on a single breadwinner are far more vulnerable to economic hardship than dual-income families.

Even when their marriages are happy and their husbands remain employed, women must anticipate the likelihood of losing their spouses eventually. The average age of widowhood in America is only 54, and by the time women reach 60, two-thirds of them do not have partners. And yet women's lifespans are steadily increasing. A hundred years ago, American women lived half as long as they do today, when a third of women are expected to live to 90 or beyond. Many spend the last three or four decades of their lives alone.

For older women, the lack of financial resources is a major problem. By virtually every measure of financial stability, women fare less well than men; they have less savings, fewer pensions, more erratic records of workforce participation, and lower Social Security benefits. As a result, women in their later years end up in poverty at twice the rate of men. Moreover, four-fifths of these women were not poor while they still had husbands around. It was the loss of their breadwinner that plunged them into poverty.