DIVORCE AND FEMINIZATION OF POVERTY IN ABAKILIKI URBAN, SOUTH-EAST OF NIGERIA

Abstract

Industrial urbanism has brought about changing roles of women in modern family. Strains occasioned by the emerging roles have led to increasing family instability and divorce. Divorce has many consequences but the economic consequences have not received the attention it deserves in scholarly and public circles. Hence, the thrust of this study which is an investigation of the link divorce has with increasing poverty of women. A number of divorced men and women were selected from Abakaliki urban and interviewed to obtain their pre and post-divorce standard of living. Data obtained from the field were compared with heuristic standard of living designed purposively for this study. The results show that divorce has made poverty a woman. Divorced wives fared far less in their standard of living of pre-divorced husbands. The discrepancy in the standard of living of pre-divorced and post divorced women compared with that of their divorced husbands is attributed to socio-structural inequalities that inhibit the realization of the female potentials in the event of divorce. Female education campaign should be intensified to erase the social inequalities between the genders. Specific welfare scheme should be introduced to assist women stand their feet in the face of challenges of divorce.

Keywords: family, female education, divorce, gender studies