‘I never really know how to answer that’: why do women still have to justify being single?

Being a single woman isn’t the social taboo it once was. Singlehood seems to be on the rise, with more single person households, and more women choosing to marry later in life, or not at all.

It could even be viewed as trendy, among growing online movements to boycott dating apps and go “boy sober”. So is the stigma attached to being a single woman well and truly gone? My latest research suggests not.

I studied two women’s experience of singlehood over the course of 17 years, from their late teens to their mid-30s. Both Gabriella and Suzy (pseudonyms) spent long periods of their adult lives unpartnered, and their experiences show how the identity of a “single woman” still carries a negative stigma that’s hard to shake.

‘I feel that others see me as a spinster’

The stigma of being a single woman dates back to the 17th century. It was around this time the term “spinster” – originally used to describe women who worked in textile spinning – was widely adapted to describe unmarried women.

Spinsters were seen as a problem in the patriarchal society of the time. Known as “feme sole” in English common law, they had many of the same legal rights as men, including the ability to own property, whereas married women did not. They also defied the idea that a woman’s worth lay only in her value as a wife.

Nonetheless, spinsters who weren’t from wealthy families were at an economic disadvantage and often restricted to lower income occupations. Even those who were financially secure were granted lower social value than their married counterparts.

Although the term feels outdated, my participant Suzy described feeling this way in her early 20s:

I am worried about being alone, not having anyone to live [with] because I cannot live with my parents forever. Even though I know I am still young at 22, and I am not ready to settle down, I feel that others see me as a spinster and that I am already off the shelf. I thought things had changed nowadays.

Both Suzy and Gabriella worried about societal expectations of them, which they felt were characterised by a linear transition from school to work, to buying a house, to getting married and settling down.

Their own lives transgressed these expectations. For instance, when the women were in their early 30s, Suzy went back to studying while Gabriella moved back in with her parents.

Research shows traditional markers of adulthood are increasingly being postponed due to economic pressures, changing social attitudes, and people choosing to stay in education for longer.

Society rewards couples

The stigma of singlehood has mostly been researched among older women, with recent work demonstrating singlehood is more acceptable up until the age of 30.

This feeling was echoed by my participants. Gabriella described being able to resist the stigma in her 20s, before more of the people around her started to couple up:

I’m in this phase of my life in my mid-30s now, where I think it’s accumulated and now I feel really lonely […] I used to be ably to defy it, never really let it get to me, and I was always very positive and stuff, but now I’m just a bit more sensitive, a bit more conscious of it.

Historically, society has been ruled by the tenacity of the “couple norm”, which is the belief that living in a couple is a superior, more natural way to live.