VOICE ALTERATIONS

• Published date: 01 April 1996
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.174-1617.1996.tb00417.x
• Date: 01 April 1996
• Author: Susan B. Merrick,Cathleen Gray

VOICE ALTERATIONS

Why

Women Have More Difficulty

Than

Men

With the Legal Process

of

Divorce

Cathleen Gray and Susan

B.

Merrick

The experience of divorce

ir

dificult for everyone involved.

To

best help with the legal

experience, we need to

undersrrmd

gender dzrerences that affect the process.

This

article

a&

to the understanding of that dyerence by acklressing womenb development

and

the female

“voice.” Women have not been acculturated to the subtle rules of litigation, which are in the

male “voice.”

The

authors offer

an

alternative scenario to

add

balance to the traditional

experience of divorce for women

and

men

and

to the divorce process itseIf.

Love, the quest;

marriage,

the conquest; divorce, the inquest.

-Helen

Rowland

[1903],

“Reflections

of

a

Bachelor

Girl,

as

quoted

in

Partnow

(1993,

p.

262)

In recent years, the literature on adjustment to divorce has expanded

rapidly and shifted in focus. It appears that the similarity between men’s and

women’s experience of and adjustment to divorce is growing (Gray, Koopman,

&

Hunt, 1991; Hanson

&

Spanier, 1983). Many professionals attribute this

to the changing roles of women and demonstrate that the more

a

woman is

‘‘liberated,’’ the less distress she experiences about divorce (Colburn, Lin,

&

Moore, 1992). The factors affecting adjustment to divorce that still remain

to be addressed may be less obvious but none the less important. One such

factor is how the legal process itself affects psychological adjustment during

and after

the

divorce. This article focuses primarily on the collision of the

legal process and women’s manner of relating to the world, which we

describe as women’s “voice.”

Voice is defined here

as

beyond actual verbalization or speech and rather

as a contextual relationship of thoughts, attitudes, and cultural conditioning

that culminate in the spoken word. It is relevant here to clarify the difference

Authors’

Note:

The

authors thank Carren Oler

for

her

legal arsirknue.

FAMILY

AND CONCILIATION COURTS

REVIEW,

Vol.

34

NO.

2,

April

1996

240-25

1

0

1996

Sage

Publications,

Inc.

240