More women divorced in India: report on marital status

For every divorced or separated man in India, there are three such women and none of the major religions, except Sikhism, has bucked the trend.

The latest findings are part of the report ‘Marital Status by Religious Community and Sex: Census 2011’ released on Wednesday, which showed that 67.02% (32.82 lakh) of the 48.97 lakh people who have divorced or living separately are women. According to the report, there are 35.35 lakh people who are separated, while another 13.62 lakh have got divorce.

Among them, 23.72 lakh married women are living separately from their husbands, while the number of men living separately from their wives is 11.62 lakh. The number of women who have got divorce is 9.09 lakh, while that of men is 4.52 lakh.

There are 57.08 crore “never married” people, 57.95 crore married ones and 5.55 crore widowed people. If one goes by the proportion of divorced or separated women among religions, Muslims seem to have the worst record. Of the 17.22 crore Muslim population, 3.84 lakh (0.22%) are living separately, while 2.69 lakh (0.15%) have got divorce.

Though Muslims may have similar proportion of its population of separated and divorced people, the number of women is more than three times. The Hindus’ proportion of separated people is 0.29% while that of divorced population is 0.09%.

The number of Hindu separated men is 9.66 lakh, while that of women is 19.04 lakh and divorced men 3.44 lakh and 6.18 lakh women.