Short answers, pulled from the story.
In Classical Athens, a man could end his marriage by sending his wife back to her family without court appearance, while an Athenian woman had to appear in public before the archon to state her case. This public exposure made divorce a rare occurrence for women despite the relative ease for men.
The Catholic Church effectively prohibited divorce in Catholic lands after the 10th century by establishing marriage as an indissoluble sacrament. While the Church permitted separation of husband and wife known as divorce a mensa et thoro, the marital relationship did not fully terminate and the couple remained legally bound.
Lord John Manners was the first person to divorce his wife Lady Anne Pierrepont through an Act of Parliament in 1670. Until the passage of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, divorce could only be obtained through a specific Act of Parliament.
Italy legalized divorce in 1970, Portugal in 1975, Brazil in 1977, Spain in 1981, and Argentina in 1987. Paraguay and Colombia both legalized divorce in 1991, followed by Andorra in 1995 and Ireland in 1996.
Women filed slightly more than two-thirds of divorce cases in the United States, and a 2004 Grant Thornton survey in the UK found that 93% of divorce cases were petitioned by wives. In the UK, 70% of divorce inquiries were from women, and divorce petitions from women outnumbered those from men by 2 to 1.
Children from divorced families are two times more likely to drop out of high school than children from non-divorced families and may be less likely to attend college. Young men or women between the ages of 7 and 16 who experienced parental divorce were more likely to leave home due to friction, cohabit before marriage, and parent a child before marriage.