Divorce often makes the headlines, and we're about to hear even more about it. A new ruling, made in relation to a high-profile court case, will allow many more previously private details of a divorce to be reported.

The judge's ruling relates to the wealthiest divorce case in UK history, a battle between hedge fund tycoon Christopher Hohn and his wife Jamie Cooper-Hohn, over a personal fortune worth at least $1.3bn (£760m). The case has already attracted huge publicity and is likely to conclude with the largest divorce award made by a British court. The couple, who are in their late 40s, were married for 17 years and have four children.

News reports on big money divorce cases often seem designed to push people's buttons, especially the one marked "grasping wife gets huge payout". The subtext of the stories is this: a man has worked hard to build up his fortune; his wife has swanned around and now suddenly wants to fleece him; she'll walk away with a massive cheque, while he'll never properly recover.

These pungent stereotypes of gold-digging wives and thwarted husbands crop up regularly in the newspapers, attached to high stakes, big money cases – and they effectively hide the reality of male and female finances, post-divorce. According to research by Professor Stephen Jenkins, former director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and now at the London School of Economics, divorce makes men significantly richer – boosting their income by around a third – while women lose more than a fifth of their income, a loss that persists for many years. A picture that is, in fact, the opposite of what you might intuit from the glare surrounding high-profile cases.

Jenkins' research found that women were disadvantaged by divorce even if they didn't have children, but for many it is the arrival of offspring that makes a significant difference. Typically and historically, women in a relationship are more likely than men to give up their full earning potential to take on the lion's share of childcare – a sacrifice that disadvantages women if their relationship later breaks down. At that point, if the wife is no longer an earner, it's unlikely she'll be able to re-enter the workplace at the level she left. Despite this, according to divorce lawyers, judges increasingly believe women who haven't worked for a decade, perhaps two, will somehow magically be able to pick up the career and earning potential they left behind.

In fact, even women who once had high-earning jobs and earned more than their spouses before having children are almost always unable to make up for the "lost" years. This is despite all the experience they have gained in the meantime: many women will be raising children, juggling this with some paid work and taking prime responsibility for the household – a workload that would equip them for all manner of roles and career pressure. But can women put this to money-making use in a working world with men's needs firmly at its centre? There would probably be better odds on climbing Everest in stilettos.

Men, meanwhile, walk away from divorce with their earning power unaffected, which is why they recover economically in no time, while it takes women years to do the same (and many never do). The unpalatable truth is that a wife who gave up her place in the workforce when she had children hardly ever regains it. She is forever disadvantaged – and the myth that she is better off than her ex, that women are always the big winners in divorce settlements, adds horrible insult to an untreatable injury.