ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on women and divorce in Western Europe,1 as a means of advancing our understanding of women and citizenship within the United Europe. Analysis of the gendered effects of divorce highlights women’s role as unpaid carers, and post divorce, as women independent of men, but affected by their relations to them and their children. Figures confirm the increasing feminisation of poverty,2 to which single parent (predominantly female headed) families make a significant contribution.3 It is also evident that high proportions of single parents are living in poverty. With increasing divorce rates in many Member States, divorced women will feature prominently amongst the poor upon retirement; whereas formerly, they would have benefited from their husbands’ superannuation or jointly acquired assets.
