'Joblessness may spell divorce for men, but not women'

However, in the case of a woman, whether she has a job or not has no effect on the likelihood that her husband would decide to leave the marriage, the Ohio State University study found.

The study also found that despite more women entering the workplace, the pressure on husbands to be breadwinners largely remains, LiveScience reported.

In addition to upping the chances their wives would leave them, unemployed men themselves were more likely to initiate divorce -- even if they reported being happy in their marriage -- than guys with jobs.

Unlike unemployed men, unemployed women were less likely to initiate divorce than their employed counterparts, the researchers said.

Employed women were more likely to initiate a divorce than women with jobs, but only when they were highly unsatisfied with the marriage.

"These effects probably emanate from the greater change in women's than men's roles," the researchers wrote in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Sociology.
"Women's employment has increased and is accepted, men's nonemployment is unacceptable to many, and there is a cultural ambivalence and lack of institutional support for men taking on 'feminised' roles such as household work and emotional support."A woman's unemployment status or decision to enter the work force is not a violation of any marriage norms. Instead, the researchers found that employment provides women with financial security, which enables them to leave a marriage when they become highly unsatisfied with their husbands.

The study, which was led by Liana Sayer of Ohio State University, was based on data from more than 3,600 couples that had been collected from three waves of the US National Survey of Families and Households.