Jo, you're the one who brought up the word "downtrodden" (i.e., oppressed). And I think you're the one reading "property rights" into this thing, too. I'm not the one who used that term, you are. (I said "assets" — but I meant it in a different sense altogether.)
But now that you mention it, property rights are one aspect of the inequality that always has, and always will, plague the relations between the sexes. The other is something that maude alludes to in another post: namely, division of labor.
Until about 30 years ago, married women in this country generally got the short end of the stick on both counts: property and division of labor. During the marriage, women had to do most of the work, while receiving little recognition from men of the real value of that work. If the marriage ended, women were rarely granted a share of the "proceeds" equal to what they had contributed.
But now that's changing, and women are starting to even the score. Some women are getting more than even, in fact, and I can tell you stories from personal experience.
Go ahead and cite all the statistics you want. I won't contest them. Just remember that statistics only tell part of the story. And I repeat my earlier challenge to you: for every tale of some poor woman you know who's been abused by a cad, I can give you a similar story of some poor schmuck who got taken to the cleaners.
You said you were fascinated by discussions of marriage, so let's rumble . . .
(Maybe we should sell tickets.)
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