One of the feminist arguments I hate the most is "women are frequently financially ruined after a divorce". Well, duh! The courts may be generous, but they aren't going to give you all of your ex-husband's income. So obviously you're going to suffer financially because during the marriage you had access to all of his income while once divorced, you're only going to have access to a portion of his income.

So isn't the real question where the two parties stand financially once the marriage ends, compared to where they were when it began? Are there any stats on that whatsoever? My suspicion is that, just based on getting older, both genders overall (but obviously not in every case) come of out a marriage in better financial condition than what they went into it. But with 97% of alimony recipients being women, I've got to imagine that the improvement for women is much, much more significant than the improvement for men.

Edit: For example, let's take Tiger & Elin Woods. Based upon Tiger's career path, I'm guessing, despite the divorce settlement, he was considerably better off 6 months post-divorce than he was 6 months pre-marriage. Of course, Elin was as well since she basically had (relatively - although she was a model and a Rollins college grad) nothing prior to marrying Tiger. As we all know, pretty much all of the marital assets were earned by Tiger's labor.

But feminists would be right to say that Elin suffered financially as a result of the divorce. Depending upon who you believe, Elin got $110 million of an estimated $600 million estate in the divorce. So, clearly, if you go from a shared net worth of $600 million to an individual net worth of $110 million, you have suffered financially. But the $110 million net worth is roughly $110 million higher than her net worth going into the marriage. So while she suffered financially from the divorce, that is only true if the starting point is the last day of the marriage. It is grossly inaccurate if the starting point is the first day of the marriage.