More separated women?

The front page of The Times (July 22) contained the phrase "with 55.6 per cent of separated individuals being women". For the last few days I have been struggling with this - how is it possible? The most obvious answer is that some of the husbands are...

The front page of The Times (July 22) contained the phrase "with 55.6 per cent of separated individuals being women". For the last few days I have been struggling with this - how is it possible? The most obvious answer is that some of the husbands are dead.

But that won't do, since the wives remain legally married and therefore become widows (rather than "separated") on their husbands' death. Two other possibilities occur to me. Either there is more polygamy than I had suspected or some of the husbands simply haven't noticed that their wives have gone and still count themselves as "married" while their wives consider themselves "separated"! Any other ideas?

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