rsely affected, thus causing a disruption to the marriage.
On the other hand, economic opportunity theorists such as Ruggles (1997) argued that women's involvement in the workforce does not directly destabilize marriages. Rather, employment simply provides women in unhappy marriages with the necessary resources to get divorced and establish an independent existence. Thus, instead of attributing the cause of divorce to increased participation of women in the workforce, economic opportunity theorists highlight the need to examine the quality of marriage in order to identify the reasons for divorce.
The gender view of the causes of divorce takes into account the fact that the reasons for divorce differ for both men and women. As Gerson and Peiss (1985) pointed out, marriage is a patriarchal institution that reinforces the economic, cultural and social privileges of men, at the expense of women. Researchers have found that women in mar
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