News & Events

On 8th December 02:00-02:45 PM (UTC +2), Elina Einiö will be presenting at PopHel Talks with title: 
Gendered housing consequences of divorce - An analysis of marital dyads from different-sex and female same-sex couples

Previous studies indicate that women experience larger material losses following divorce than men. This disparity may be attributed to various factors, including women’s caregiving roles during the marriage and the wage gap between genders. Women may also face elevated levels of housing insecurity if divorce prevents them from retaining owner-occupied housing following marital disruption. Because most studies focus on different-sex couples, little evidence is available on whether women married to women experience a smaller loss in homeownership than women married to men following divorce. Using record-linkage data of marital dyads from different-sex and female same-sex couples in Finland, we assessed changes in both spouses’ homeownership and marital home residence for three years before and after the year of divorce (2002-2021). Our study indicates that losses in homeownership, as well as the loss of a marital home, are greater for women divorcing men compared to both their husbands and women divorcing women. On the other hand, women in same-sex couples are less likely to own their marital homes before the divorce, suggesting that they have fewer material resources to lose in a divorce than women in different-sex couples. The findings indicate that no divorced group fully recovers from their losses within three years of the divorce. However, spouses who earned more than their marital dyads experienced smaller losses, suggesting that nontraditional gender roles may protect women from adverse housing consequences following divorce.

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