Abstract

The essay deals with the last 30 years of judicial separations in Naples. Judicial separations - i.e., when only one spouse asks for separation, against the other's will - seem to reveal many hidden aspects of gender relationships within and outside couples' lives, focusing on wives' and husbands' expectations toward marriage: judicial sources and data effectively reveal gender roles and social and economic consequences of separation. Gender differences in marriage are investigated through the couples' experience of crisis, which unveil a widespread pattern of conflict, a particular female tendency to initiate the process of separation, and a complex pattern of gender asymmetries both during and after life together. Cultural and economic changes as well as reforms in the family law over the last 30 years do not seem to have radically eroded or even contained gender role asymmetry between husbands and wives.