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The 'problem' with single women: Choice, accountability and social change
Abstract
Despite increased acknowledgement of gender equality as a social good, there are some areas where the practice of women’s autonomy is apparently inconsistent with the normative prescriptions of a new ‘empowered’ form of femininity. Sexuality and personal relationship status are sites where women are positioned within neo-liberal and post-feminist discourse in such a way that their choices are subject to questioning. A model of gender hegemony is useful for understanding how and why choosing to be single may still constitute a ‘problem’ for women, despite the intensification of messages which also address women as autonomous, sexualized subjects. In cultures dominated by an ideology of marriage and family life, single women’s identity work resolves contradictions in the current gender order and in the process reinstates heteronormativity.
... I chart the contemporary cultural moment from the 1990s, a time that is marked by a deepening of neoconservative values within the US/UK (Negra, 2004) and the emergence of what has been commonly critiqued as a postfeminist culture. It is in this postfeminist context (See Chapter 1.4 for a discussion of postfeminism) that the single woman has not only revived but reconstructed historical tropes in new ways (Budgeon, 2015). Having reviewed scholarship on single femininity in the popular cultural genres of TV, literature, periodicals, newspapers, advertising and websites, I identify six major themes which emerged: deviancy, social isolation, mental instability, professionalisation, hypersexualisation, and self-surveillance. ...
... As discussed, (see Chapter 2.2.2B above), single female subjectivity in contemporary popular culture is often produced through postfeminist discourses of self-surveillance and self-regulation. However within scholarship on lived experience, while there are some similar postfeminist themes, there is a lack of studies which examine self-surveillance, except more tenuously in relation to the construction of the self (Budgeon, 2015). Class is also largely neglected as a topic: Bay-Cheng & Goodkind's research is one of the few studies to consider how the intersection of class influences women's attitudes towards singledom through a quantitative analysis (Bay-Cheng & Goodkind, 2016). ...
... N. Williams, 2014). As I elaborate below, studies have examined this in the context of postfeminist themes of agency, choice, independence, as well as how stigma intersects with (predominantly older) age (Budgeon, 2015;Hafford-Letchfield et al., 2016;Reynolds & Wetherell, 2003a;Reynolds et al., 2007;Sharp & Ganong, 2007). For example, Reynolds, Wetherall and Taylor, from a critical discursive psychology perspective, claim that single women's narratives of single subjectivity employ the postfeminist rhetoric of choice to negotiate stigma, according to culturally sanctioned norms (Reynolds et al., 2007, p. 333) In a discursive analysis of 30 single women's narratives of lived experience, the authors argue women employ the rhetoric of choice and agency to negotiate stigma. ...
While the number of single women in the UK and the US has grown over the past two decades, there has been a simultaneous proliferation of representations of single femininity in Anglo-American popular culture. Yet there has been little exploration of how the cultural construction of the single woman is encountered, experienced and negotiated in single women’s lived experience. This thesis examines the interplay between the cultural and the psychic formation of single feminine subjectivity in a postfeminist cultural context. I take Foucault’s understanding of subjectivity as discursively constructed, alongside Butlerian psychosocial theory and the concept of fantasy, to theorise singledom as a form of gendered performativity. I ask how cultural fantasies of singledom performatively sustain, threaten or transform the norms of feminine subjectivity, and importantly what it means to live amongst such an imaginary. To do so, I analyse the discursive construction of the single woman in eight contemporary popular cultural US-UK texts and the self-narratives of 25 single women living in London. My analysis finds that celebratory fantasies of ‘successful’ single femininity coalesce around freedom, autonomy and independence. Yet, paradoxically, the freedom of the successful single subject is produced through regulatory incitements to identify, maintain, regulate and transform the single ‘self’. Where the single woman fails to correctly self-survey she is subject to painful abjectifying processes of silencing, invisibility and incoherence, which work ideologically to sustain the boundaries of normative femininity and produce deep psychic tensions. But I also argue that such ‘failures’ more productively open up opportunities for the transformation of gender norms in intimate life. In these moments of ‘radical unbecoming’ the liminal positioning of single femininity outside the coupled norm, decentres romantic love, reconfigures hierarchies of intimacy and care and troubles the single/coupled and gender binary.
... Over the past decade, a number of authors (Barr, Simons, & Simons, 2015;Bay-Cheng & Goodkind, 2016;Budgeon, 2008Budgeon, , 2016Collins, 2011;Meier, Hull, & Ortyl, 2009) have drawn attention to the prevailing dominance of the ideology of family, marriage, and heterosexual couplehood to the detriment of other relationship states, like singlehood, that are steadily increasing in number. Marriage remains a desired status, especially for women (Barros-Gomes & Baptist, 2014;Dhar, 2015). ...
... Single women especially are often believed to be lonelier, less attractive, less satisfied with their lives and more dysfunctional than non-single people (Adamczyk, 2016;Byrne & Carr, 2005). Accordingly, single women often experience marginalisation and/or stigmatisation (Collins, 2011), whilst heterosexual couples enjoy a privileged position (Budgeon, 2016). A recent study by Sarkisian and Gerstel (2016), however, challenges the notion of single women as lonely and marginal by finding that never-married, North American women actually tend to have more enduring social ties with a wider network of people than married people. ...
... They explicitly and implicitly attributed these emotional experiences to not having a significant other who cared about them the way they believed a committed partner would. It is therefore clear that they adhered to the assumptions espoused in the ideology of heterosexual couples and marriage as identified by authors like DePaulo and Morris (2005), and Budgeon (2016); specifically the assumptions that all people inherently long for and need a committed sexual relationship, and that this ultimate peer relationship confers automatic companionship, care, and support. They further believed that such a committed sexual relationship could provide a sense of connectedness that could not be found in other relationships like family or friends. ...
Worldwide, societies continue to privilege the ideology of couplehood to the detriment of other relationship states, like singlehood, that are steadily increasing in number. Furthermore, according to developmental psychology theory, the formation of a committed romantic relationship is viewed as an important psychosocial developmental task in adulthood. It is therefore not surprising that women’s experience of being single has generally been neglected by psychological theory and research. Situated in a feminist phenomenological perspective, this study explored the experiences of tertiary-educated, child-free, never-married, White, South African women between the ages of 30 and 40. Giorgi’s descriptive-phenomenological method was used to analyse the individual interview data. In this article, we discuss four of the prominent themes that best reflect the collective views and multi-faceted experiences of the participants: singlehood brings both freedom and loneliness; career as both fulfilment and singlehood coping mechanism; committed partners as sources of both restriction and connection; and hoping for a committed relationship. We highlight how the notion of a committed sexual relationship as the ultimate relationship that provides effortless connectedness and companionship underpins all of these themes. We argue that alternative discourses and mechanisms of connection that accommodate people who live as single adults, should be fostered
... Traditional Western (heteronormative) femininity has long been associated with the domestic sphere and motherhood, placing value with attributes such as agreeableness, passivity, and selflessness. Both neoliberalism and feminism have been credited with contributing to a new form of femininity which allows for and emphasises attributes traditionally associated with masculinity, such as independence, autonomy, and confidence (Budgeon 2015). However, although this new form of femininity appears to offer women a range of options and more liberated identities, heteronormative gender norms (Budgeon 2015) remain an organising feature of femininity, offering choice that is not entirely free or unconstrained. ...
... Both neoliberalism and feminism have been credited with contributing to a new form of femininity which allows for and emphasises attributes traditionally associated with masculinity, such as independence, autonomy, and confidence (Budgeon 2015). However, although this new form of femininity appears to offer women a range of options and more liberated identities, heteronormative gender norms (Budgeon 2015) remain an organising feature of femininity, offering choice that is not entirely free or unconstrained. ...
... In New Zealand, single-person households are the second most common (after one-family households) and are the fastest growing type of household (Statistics New Zealand 2013)-demographics which parallel trends for the United Kingdom (Budgeon 2008;Gill 2007) and the United States (Miller 2005). Because marriage has ceased to be an imperative, women can now become financially independent and (potentially) sustain a positive self-identity based around their career (and/or other pursuits) (Budgeon 2015). ...
The (older) single woman has evoked numerous negative sociocultural stereotypes in recent (Western) history, with “being single” a fraught position for (heterosexual) women. Have shifts toward gendered equality changed this stereotype? We interviewed 21 young heterosexual women in Aotearoa (New Zealand) about their experiences of being single. We focused on young adulthood (ages 25–35), a time when having children might be a particularly salient concern. Women’s experiences of being single were inextricable from their wider experiences of heterosexuality and pressures to enact a “desirable” femininity. A thematic analysis identified four patterned sets of pressures, which we conceptualised as rules that govern hetero-relating: (a) pressures and expectations surrounding beauty standards, (b) (allowing for) aspects of male control and superiority, (c) acceptable/unacceptable gendered standards of sexuality, and (d) eventual and mandatory (heterosexual) coupling (by a “certain” age). Participants remained largely subject to traditional ideas around heterosexual gender roles, with identifiable punishments for “unfeminine” behaviour. Many women did articulate resistance and critique, even as most also expressed complicity. In this context, singledom was constructed as a “defective’ state,” even if desired, suggesting it remains a complex and precarious position to occupy.
... We expect gender differences to emerge in the experience of social network pressure, with women more likely than men to receive encouragement and push to form a romantic attachment. As noted by Budgeon (2016), women's lives are "governed by heteronormative gender norms that place the couple at the heart of the social order" Social Network Pressure to Partner in Emerging Adulthood (p. 402). ...
... 402). Although both men and women may face negative stereotypes and stigmatization for not being in a relationship, there is suggestive evidence that women experience this to a greater degree (Budgeon, 2016;DePaulo, 2006;McKeown & Parry, 2019;Simpson, 2016). Moreover, and according to recent research, single women's needs can be ignored in society, even by women's organizations (English, 2019). ...
The romantic dyad is emphasized in society, which leads to the question of whether single (non-partnered) adults in emerging adulthood perceive pressure from their social network members to become partnered. The first purpose of this study was to examine the degree of pressure to enter a relationship that single (unattached) men and women perceive that they receive from two social networks (parents/family and friends) and whether there is a gender difference in this degree of pressure to partner. The second purpose was to examine how social pressure to partner is associated with the fear of being single (FOBS). A sample of 616 single (unpartnered) adults ages 18 to 30, primarily from the U.S., reported some degree of network pressure to enter a relationship on average. Greater pressure to become partnered was perceived from parents/family than from friends. Women scored higher than men on an index of social pressure from parents/family to enter a relationship and also higher on an index measuring FOBS. Social network pressure to enter a relationship was associated with a greater FOBS for both men and women.
... As harmful as it can be to the LGBTQ+ movement, on the flip side, homonormativity does provide a certain sense of comfort and familiarity through its similarity to heteronormativity; it converges the expectations of some parents of LGBTQ+ children and LGBTQ+ people to some extent and clears a path for legal advancement in the crossfire for or against LGBTQ+ rights (Liu 2015). Although homonormativity, like heteronormativity and compulsory marriage, is by no means specific to Taiwan (Budgeon 2016), the sociocultural development that makes such discourses dominant in Taiwan, as well as how those discourses influence family relational work, is worth investigating. ...
... At the other end of the spectrum are people, especially women, who stay outside heterosexual marriages. For unmarried women who have passed the normative marriageable age range in Taiwan, their singlehood is stigmatized, pathologized, and deemed a problem (Budgeon 2016) or even a "national security crisis" (Qiu 2015). These women are nicknamed "leftover women" (Fincher 2016) or "loser dogs" (Martin 2013), terms that commodify women while connoting the privileged status of heterosexual marriage to which the less competitive and less desirable women are denied access. ...
... Apesar de as forças económicas terem um peso determinante junto das mulheres migrantes (Mahapatro, 2010), a insatisfação com a sociedade de acolhimento e de origem, a par do anseio por novas oportunidades, fazem com que a arte e as práticas artísticas emerjam como um veículo de ação e de defesa. Portanto, o uso da arte por parte de mulheres migrantes tem como objetivo final o desafio das estruturas sociais existentes que, por conseguinte, fazem com que estas mulheres, na maioria dos casos, fiquem atadas a restrições sociais associadas aos papéis e normas convencionais em matéria de género, mas também em matéria de inserção social (Budgeon, 2015;Chowdhory et al., 2022). Paralelamente, as práticas artísticas, em relação às experiências de migração, conferem às mulheres uma oportunidade de reflexão, bem como enfatizam a ideia de que o empoderamento feminino se trata de um processo de longue-durée e não como um produto de consumo rápido. ...
This article represents a reflection around the round table organized in the scope of the III International COMbART Conference. Starting from a visual and content analysis of the artworks of three women artists, with an migrant trajectory, we seek to deepen a discussion based on three pillars: art, women's migration and artivism. The focus on these three analytical axes has to do with the fact that we aim to put into perspective some processes of identity-cultural reconstruction, having as a starting point an artistic practice, namely visual arts, and dance. For a long time, migrant women have been seen as mere passive agents, not being expected to have an interest for the most diverse artistic-cultural expressions and, in this sense, this article is a theoretical and empirical contribution that aims to demystify these imaginaries that tend to characterize migrant women as an invisible face of contemporary societies. Thus, we intend to demonstrate the transformative potential of the cultural and artistic productions of three women with a migration background, as well as to show that the arts can be a weapon, i.e. an effective means to transform contemporary societies.
... Apesar de as forças económicas terem um peso determinante junto das mulheres imigrantes (Mahapatro, 2010), a insatisfação com a sociedade de acolhimento e de origem, a par do anseio por novas oportunidades, fazem com que a arte e as práticas artísticas emerjam como um veículo de ação e de defesa. Portanto, o uso da arte por parte de mulheres imigrantes tem como objetivo final o desafio das estruturas sociais existentes que, por conseguinte, fazem com que estas mulheres, na maioria dos casos, fiquem atadas a restrições sociais associadas aos papéis e normas convencionais em matéria de género, mas também em matéria de inserção social (Budgeon, 2015;Chowdhory et al., 2022). Paralelamente, as práticas artísticas, em relação às experiências de imigração, conferem às mulheres uma oportunidade de reflexão, bem como enfatizam a ideia de que o empoderamento feminino se trata de um processo de longue-durée e não como um produto de consumo rápido. ...
This paper seeks to reflect the various interpretations of the ways of seeing the empty spaces in the artwork, through a theoretical discussion on perception and visual culture, the hermeneutic methodology of the image is implemented in photographs of two exhibitions where visual silences are manifested as an aesthetic and political experience in social protest: the Art-Less initiative and the work Take the Money and Run. It is important to recognize within the composition of an artwork, the saturation of noise that allows visual silences to be acts of insurrection, and consequently, to contribute with elements that reflects of the understanding of the processes and contexts where aesthetic silences as a political action are manifested, whether in the streets or in private spaces, such as museums, where individuals or creative authors have the opportunity to recreate them and, the spectators, to re-signify them.
... men) may be subject to greater experiences of marginalization. For example, Lahad (2017) and Budgeon (2016) argued that longterm singlehood deviates from society's expectations for people to enter committed partnerships, especially for women who pass the normative age for marriage and childbearing. Thus, single women may often be portrayed negatively, as either lacking in communal qualities (e.g., having failed to maintain relationships) or having unmitigated agentic qualities (e.g., being too focused on career). ...
Singlehood, defined as not being in a romantic relationship, is becoming increasingly common worldwide. Despite this, research on singlehood has not received remotely equivalent research attention as romantic relationships. Well-being research that has explicitly included singles has focused on whether coupled versus single people are more satisfied with their lives. However, these between-group comparisons have not attended to within-group variability among singles that can point to when and for whom singlehood is associated with thriving. In this review, we document findings from the emerging field of singlehood studies to highlight what is and is not known about factors that are associated with the well-being of single individuals from a within-group perspective. Our review examines (a) intrapersonal factors (characteristics of the individual), (b) interpersonal experiences (qualities of one’s social relationships and experiences), and (c) societal influences (features related to one’s broader social or cultural context) related to well-being in singlehood. We conclude by offering future directions for the conceptualization of and research on singlehood with the goal of promoting a thorough and inclusive perspective.
... Marriage and family life are still highly valued and are the preferred choice in most societies. However, singlehood is becoming a significant phenomenon in Western societies (Bedoen, 2015;Lahad, 2012;Sharp & Ganong, 2011), suggesting a new discourse based on liberal values such harsh punishment. They may even be threatened with death (Hasan, 1999). ...
Single women face various stressors throughout their lives. The study examines the experience of single Palestinian women in Israel and assesses how socio-demographic factors (age, level of education, economic status), cognitive factors (sense of coherence) and environmental factors (perceived social and family support) help to explain the level of stress in this group of women. A mixed methods design was employed: The qualitative component included eighteen semi-structured interviews, while the quantitative sample involved 183 participants who responded to four scale questions and five open questions. Two key findings are presented: First, a thematic analysis illustrates how complicated life is for Palestinian single women in Israel, whose experience is characterized by social exclusion and stressful situations. Second, the study finds significant connections between the women’s perceived stress and their sense of coherence, family support and age. The findings underline the need to empower unmarried Arab women, as well as the need for various forms of community intervention. We recommend conducting longitudinal research with unmarried women and to include family members (parents and siblings) in the sample in order to assess the experience of singlehood from the perspective of these significant others.
... Second, since women's choices are subject to social expectations (Budgeon, 2016), understanding social expectations via audience reviews becomes an urgent task for research on gendered media representations. The audience accounts of urban womencentred TV dramas can shed light on the manifestation of postfeminist sensibility, the public discourse on gender roles and the everydayness of postfeminism. ...
In the past decade, there has been a significant rise in urban women-themed TV dramas in China, some of which have generated substantial public discourse on femininity. While Western women-centred TV and cinematic productions have been discussed intensively, much less attention has been paid to Chinese TV series and their audience reception. This article highlights the usefulness of studying audience response to the women-centred TV series produced in China over the past decade, especially those focusing on single women as main characters. By examining these widely-viewed TV series and their audience interpretation, this article aims to investigate the ordinariness and everydayness through which a postfeminist sensibility manifests in a non-Western context. As the research shows, these women-centred TV series reveal the diverse dimensions of urban women’s everyday lives. However, Chinese audiences express strong opposition to masculinised hypercorrection and the fetishisation of the gynandroid in such TV series. Many Chinese viewers prefer to see a realistic representation of Chinese women who have autonomy and the right to be imperfect. The findings shed light on gender-related debates in China today and contribute to discussions about the everydayness of postfeminism from an audience’s perspective.
... Much of this literature has been organised around considering whether singledom is stigmatised, as a 'deficit' identity, or whether such stigmatisation is 'resisted' (Addie and Brownlow, 2014;Byrne and Carr, 2005;Depaulo and Morris, 2005;Williams, 2014). Studies have also examined single femininity in relation to postfeminist themes of agency, choice, and independence, and how stigma intersects with (predominantly older) age (Budgeon, 2015;Hafford et al., 2016;Reynolds and Wetherell, 2003;Reynolds et al., 2007;Sharp and Ganong, 2007). While much scholarship examines representation and lived experience of single femininity separately, few bridge these fields. ...
Drawing on analysis of media representations and interviews with 25 single women, this article argues that the single woman is abjectified in US–UK popular culture through processes of instability and incoherence, which construct her as a threat to heteronormative femininity and recentres the coupled norm. Yet there are moments of contestation within media portrayals, where her ‘illegibility’ allows for a troubling of the gender binary and opens up spaces for working with and against such oppressive structures. Drawing on Butler’s heterosexual matrix, I show that singledom is produced here as a non-normative heterosexual practice, which radically destabilises femininity and heteronormativity. This article examines not only how single femininity is being culturally delegitimised, but also how single women in the United Kingdom experience such delegitimisation. Through complex processes of what José Esteban Muñoz calls ‘(dis)identification’, the women work with, alongside and against representations of normative coupled femininity. They also tactically work with portrayals of the single woman to self-reflexively construct alternative single feminine subjectivities. Yet more troublingly, even in moments of resistance, the single women make painful identifications with their abject positioning.
... Joe Dolla does not believe in a woman with no family and compares her to a man who frequently tells lies. Indeed, our social conditions largely support heterosexual marriage and family life as a goal of a successful life and those who fail to fit this category are often marginalized and subject to stereotyping, discrimination, or stigmatization (Budgeon, 2016). Thus, in some cultures, women who are still single or unmarried at a certain age are often viewed as bad. ...
span lang="EN-US">The glass ceiling effect is a phenomenon that often happens in society but is still rarely addressed. It is because this phenomenon is oftentimes hard to notice since we are already used to it. However, this kind of issue is apparent in What Men Want (2019) movie. This current study aims to analyze the glass ceiling effect faced by the main character in the movie, Ali Davis. The method used to help analyze the data is a qualitative method by taking dialogues from the movie as the main data of this research. The result shows the aspects that indicate the glass ceiling effect in the movie are the employee promotion system, discrimination from male coworkers, and discrimination from a prospective client. Eventually, this study reveals that the glass ceiling effect still occurs in the modern era. Therefore, this current study suggests that companies have to be mindful when they set policies and a good understanding of gender equality among people in the workplace is also needed to minimize the similar cases. </span
... Being single might explain the lower levels of mental health among the childless women as it is known that being single can contribute to feelings of loneliness, causing emotional distress (Adamczyk, 2016). The controls in our sample may have felt lonely, aspired to having a (heterosexual) relationship or not, wanted to be sexually active, or felt stigmatized by their single status, possibly affecting their individual happiness (Budgeon, 2016). Women without children consider the safety of nowadays society as a reason to critically think about choosing to become a mother (Beeck van et al., 2019). ...
Background
: Having children or being childless is associated with differences in women's psychological wellbeing during the reproductive age period.
Methods
: An individually matched case-control cohort study, measuring psychological wellbeing with the 5-item Mental Health Inventory (MHI-5) was conducted. Repeatedmeasures analysis of variance and chi-square tests were used to measure the across time changes of MHI-5 scores. ANCOVA and Cochran's Q examined the differences between MHI-5 scores of women with children (cases) and of childless women (controls) at three timepoints. Timepoints were determined by the cases’ prepregnancy (T1), post-birth (T2), longer-term (T3) moments.
Results
: Motherhood status has a significant medium effect on psychological wellbeing [F(1.112) 20.99, p
... Much of the literature on singledom has taken a critical discursive psychology or phenomenological approach to understand how women experience their single subjectivities (Addie and Brownlow, 2014;Jacques and Radtke, 2012;Miller, 2020;Reynolds et al., 2007;Reynolds and Taylor, 2005;Reynolds and Wetherell, 2003). Scholars have also explored how postfeminist themes of agency, choice, independence within women's discourses of singledom are deepened through regulatory intersections with age and sexuality (Budgeon, 2015;Byrne and Carr, 2005;DePaulo and Morris, 2005;Hafford-Letchfield et al., 2016;Reynolds et al., 2007;Sharp and Ganong, 2007;Williams and Nida, 2005). While older single femininity is frequently linked to asexuality, life course analysis suggests that older single women continue to retain an 'active sense of the sexual selves and identity' (Watson et al., 2016) and demonstrate a diversity of attitudes towards singledom (Baumbusch, 2004). ...
Despite a growth in single women in UK society over the past two decades, single femininity continues to be highly stigmatised. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of the heterosexual matrix and applying this to qualitative interview data with 25 single women, I argue that single femininity is produced as abject through processes of silencing which render the single female a ‘failed’ subject and reinscribe heteronormative coupled femininity. Yet while deeply painful, such ‘failures’ may also be productive, offering moments where the boundaries of heteronormative feminine subjectivity and hierarchies of intimate life are troubled and transformed. This article complicates understandings of stigma and resistance through a nuanced analysis of processes of abjectification and ambivalence.
... However, singlehood violates the dominant cultural norms of partnering and parenting. Women can indeed make more autonomous choices but they cannot free themselves of the ideology of marriage and family that is responsible for women's wish for a heterosexual partner and a genetically related child (Budgeon, 2016). A stable relationship with the right partner is seen as an essential precondition for pursuing parenthood (Baldwin, 2017). ...
All studies show that the primary reason for women to consider elective egg freezing is the lack of a partner. The first question then is where this shortage comes from and how it can be remedied. The main cause of the ‘lack of partner’ issue for highly-educated women (the group most involved in elective egg freezing) is the reversed gender gap in education. It is concluded that EEF may increase individual reproductive autonomy but does not increase reproductive freedom for the group of highly-educated women. Regardless of how many women would freeze their eggs, a large number of educated women will eventually have to choose between going it alone as a single mother or looking for another life goal. Finally some possible policy measures are proposed to reduce the gender gap and thus remove the real cause of the problem.
... Allen, 2016), it was also fraught with tensions around being 'self-centred' (Ida) or 'egotistic', as Heidi put it above. As Budgeon (2016) argues, being a single woman may be acceptable as an empowering and legitimate choice, but only up until a certain age. Similarly, Nikoline told how she enjoyed her present lifestyle, but also mentioned the shame she associated with living what she saw as a privileged life: Nikoline refers to media representations of 'today's youth' as irresponsible when depicting how she enjoys her current situation and lifestyle with a substantial income that could 'support a family'. ...
Analyses of young feminine identities have often focused on consumption, career and intimate life as separate spheres. In this article, we bring these together to nuance the concept of the ‘top girl’. Drawing on a qualitative study of young Norwegian ‘top girls’’ alcohol consumption and lifestyles we explore how ‘appropriate’ feminine identities are configured in the present and in the future. We analyse how the egalitarian context shapes the contours of the ‘top girl’ and find that ‘progressive’ values are central to our participants’ present lifestyles. However, these progressive lifestyles are expected to collide with the ‘square’ lives the participants see awaiting them as middle-class adult women and mothers. We argue that as the participants grow older, the range of legitimate, middle-class femininities is narrowing. Further, we suggest that in an egalitarian context such as the Norwegian context the ‘top girl’ lacks an attractive, adult equivalent.
... We find this temporal lens particularly productive because it allows us to capture the key schemes that underwrite the significant personal meaning that is assigned to self-marriage. As we will demonstrate, mediated accounts of self-marriage are deeply informed by temporal logics, some running against the prevailing stigmatizing approaches of late singlehood (see for example, Budgeon, 2008Budgeon, , 2016DePaulo, 2007;Kislev, 2019;Lahad, 2017;Simpson, 2006) and, more broadly, dominant heteronormative temporal schemes. ...
The phenomenon commonly described as self-marriage is an exponentially growing trend in which individuals, mostly women, marry themselves. Drawing on a textual analysis of self-marriage accounts in online media, we argue that this concept denotes a new form of self-love and self-commitment – at the heart of which lies a wellness program, rather than a legal contract. This article explores this emergent concept, focusing on a notable, though not exclusive, segment of its practitioners: single women. We analyze the discursive formations and narrative formulas through which self-marriage travels and consolidates in the digital world. We explore this performative act in temporal terms: we introduce the concept of temporal ownership, to explain how self-marriage offers single women a venue by which they can claim to take control over their present and future, and reposition themselves vis-a-vis heteronormative timelines. Our account of temporal ownership is threefold. We analyze self-marriage as a declaration about ‘non-waiting’, and the creation of a ‘present continuous temporality’; as an act of ‘moving forward’, a meaningful milestone heralding a new beginning; and, finally, as a commitment to lifelong self-love. This threefold discussion leads us to a broader contribution to the sociological literature. In particular, we use self-marriage as a case study with which to flesh out the utility of thinking about wellness culture and certain aspects of neoliberalism through a temporal lens.
... In this rhetoric, gendering is not considered to be a requirement, but is rather chosen for its symbolic appeal. Both Budgeon [18] and Lamont [51] contend that if the notion of choice does not translate into resistance of gender norms, it does not grant women agency. Postcolonial feminists, however, oppose this liberal feminist conflation of agency with resistance of traditional gender practices [11,21]. ...
This study, situated within a social constructionist theoretical framework, explored how a group of South African, middle-class, Indian and Malay Muslim, married couples constructed gender in their relationships. Most of the studies that have been conducted on gender in Muslim marriages focus exclusively on women’s issues and included only female participants. Similarly, the few gender studies available on South African Muslims highlight the experiences or rights of women and relied on female participants. None of these studies incorporated dyadic, or couple data. We adopted a feminist social constructionist framework to explore how eight South African Muslim couples between the ages of 23 and 36 co-constructed and negotiated gender in the daily practices of their relationship. We conducted 12 (totalling nearly 24 h) joint interviews and used a thematic analysis method to analyse the data. We found that the couples constructed men and women as essentially different and complementary, and that they strongly proclaimed their relationships as equitable. Participants’ felt sense of equality seemed to be grounded in perceptions of their gendered roles as chosen, negotiable, and appreciated rather than enforced, compulsory and taken for granted. We conclude that participants’ gender ideas and practices enabled them to feel, claim and/or negotiate agentic positions in their relationships with their partners, but some of their ideas and practices may limit agency and scope of experiences.
... Despite the importance that some historians ascribe to singles' culture in earlier periods, scant attention has been paid to commercial and non-profit avenues for singles in contemporary sociological research. Sociological focus has been on how singles both sustain and challenge relational and sexual norms, and how this is politically embedded (Roseneil and Budgeon, 2004;Budgeon, 2008Budgeon, , 2016Kaufmann, 2008;Evertsson and Nyman, 2013). ...
As the proportion of singles grows in Sweden, the number of commercial and non-commercial activities catering to singles has increased. This article argues that these activities are situating singles within relations to others and to a community, and are becoming sites for performing and negotiating singledom. Using Simmel’s concept of sociability, the article presents an analysis of two cases of singles’ activities in Sweden – a company arranging singles’ cruises and festivals, and a singles’ association. It argues that while the organisers talked about singles’ needs for therapeutic social contact, participants themselves sometimes used the activities differently. Rather than understanding themselves as in need of proxy social interaction, they either intended to find a mate, or found actual satisfaction in a community of singles that superseded the need for a partner. Apart from stressing the importance of sociability in understanding singles’ activities, the article shows that this latter conception also challenges normative notions of coupledom, for example, by allowing for singles with partners.
Licence: Creative Commons CC BY-NC .
Single and childless women over the age of 35 constitute an expanding demographic in North America and many parts of the world, yet our society continues to place importance on marriage and family as markers of life success. This study explored how eight single (never-married) and childless women experience themselves during early midlife (ages 35–45) utilizing the Listening Guide method of analysis. Three categories of participant voices were uncovered in this research: voices which conveyed the positivity of living a single and childless identity (i.e. the voices of hope, faith, gratitude, nurturance, freedom, and resilience), voices which conveyed the struggles of living a single and childless identity (i.e. the voices of invisibility, shame, confusion, loneliness, guilt, longing, and uncertain waiting), and the voice of ambivalence. Implications for clinical practice and research are discussed.
Background: Globally, there is an apparent demographic movement toward an aging population. This poses difficulties, especially for retired public school teachers who are single. Additionally, the researcher, who has spent years offering psychosocial services to clients, is aware of this group's susceptibility to aging-related difficulties that may jeopardize their well-being. Methods: A qualitative-phenomenological approach was adopted. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 6 participants aged 60 to 80, unmarried retired public school teachers. Employing thematic analysis, interview transcripts were analyzed for themes to organize the data. Results: Four major themes emerged: (1) Embracing a Positive Emotional State, with Sub-themes (a) Awakening of reality being single for life, (b) Maintaining a smooth interpersonal relationship, (c)Achieving a sense of meaning, (2) Confronting the challenges with Sub-themes (a) Dependency of family members (b)Managing financial needs (c) Coming to terms with death (3) Coping With Life Eventualities with Sub-themes (a) Staying productive (b) Participating in Civic and Religious Organizations (c) Connecting with God (4) Breaking stereotypes about being a spinster teacher and ageism. Conclusion: Aging vulnerabilities can particularly challenge those who live without a spouse. However, having a hopeful, positive attitude about the future helps the unmarried remain motivated to cope with life. Ultimately, this will bring the elderly to resiliency and acceptance. Their experiences can add to a growing study in developmental psychology and personality that looks at how life accounts reveal the inherent aspects of lived human experience. The outcome of the past, the wisdom behind the trials, and the success stories of the life of participants were essential for understanding the strategies they use to manage age and aging-related challenges and age successfully. Limitations of the findings: The scope was limited to Northern Negros area while the number of participants in this study was within the acceptable range of six (6). The participants were all female and all were teachers from the public school system. Thus, the findings are not conclusive, and this limitation made it difficult to explore their experiences within the broader context of their lives. Direction for Future Research: Future research can be built upon the results that were acquired in this study. Further research could also be done on effective preventative and therapeutic strategies for elderly single people. It is advised to conduct additional research using more extensive samples of this demographic that is to include single male retired public and private school teachers. A longitudinal study might provide a more comprehensive and in-depth view of aging and spinsterhood. Examining the extended family's perspectives, other professions, and the larger population is an aspect that could help broaden and deepen the understanding of the experiences of single and retired teachers. Practical Value of the Paper: The findings will serve as baseline data for improving interventions and programs of DepEd and OSCA, which must concentrate on offering practical assistance, like psychosocial services and a solution for social acceptance, to eradicate stigma. Mental health professionals must have knowledge and guidance on how to facilitate the well-being of the elderly and enhance their quality of life as they age.
This paper uses a queer theoretical lens to redefine family boundaries and structures by exploring LGBTQIA+ and single adults' relationships through the interconnectedness of their marginalized histories. Queer theory both centers LGBTQIA+ lives and deconstructs normativities. The overlapping history of singlehood and LGBTQIA+ will be explored using examples including romantic friendships, same-sex couples and legal marriage, family of choice, and relationship anarchy. These examples explore how LGBTQIA+ people have often been considered single or choose new interpretations of singlehood (e.g., solo polyamory). The paper also explores how single people have often been considered outside the heterosexual norm. Thus, how these lived experiences deconstruct heteronormativity and can deconstruct mononormativity, amatonormativity, and homonormativity is examined. Understanding and acknowledging family lives beyond these normativities will build toward a more inclusive family and relationship science.
Importance:
Elevated allostatic load (AL) has been associated with adverse socioenvironmental stressors and tumor characteristics that convey poor prognosis in patients with breast cancer. Currently, the association between AL and all-cause mortality in patients with breast cancer is unknown.
Objective:
To examine the association between AL and all-cause mortality in patients with breast cancer.
Design, setting, and participants:
This cohort study used data from an institutional electronic medical record and cancer registry at the National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center. Participants were patients with breast cancer diagnoses (stage I-III) between January 1, 2012, through December 31, 2020. Data were analyzed from April 2022 through November 2022.
Exposure:
AL was expressed as a summary score calculated by assigning 1 point for biomarkers in the worst sample quartile. High AL was defined as AL greater than the median.
Main outcomes and measures:
The main outcome was all-cause mortality. A Cox proportional hazard models with robust variance tested the association between AL and all-cause mortality.
Results:
There were 4459 patients (median [IQR] age, 59 [49-67] years) with an ethnoracial distribution of 3 Hispanic Black patients (0.1%), 381 non-Hispanic Black patients (8.5%), 23 Hispanic White patients (0.5%), 3861 non-Hispanic White patients (86.6%), 27 Hispanic patients with other race (0.6%), and 164 non-Hispanic patients with other race (3.7%). The mean (SD) AL was 2.6 (1.7). Black patients (adjusted relative ratio [aRR], those with 1.11; 95% CI, 1.04-1.18), single marital status (aRR, 1.06; 95% CI, 1.00-1.12), and those with government-supplied insured (Medicaid aRR, 1.14; 95% CI, 1.07-1.21; Medicare aRR, 1.11; 95% CI, 1.03-1.19) had a higher adjusted mean AL than those who were White, married/living as married, or privately insured, respectively. Adjusting for sociodemographic, clinical, and treatment factors, high AL was associated with a 46% increase in mortality risk (hazard ratio [HR], 1.46; 95% CI, 1.11-1.93) over low AL. Similarly, compared with patients in the first AL quartile, those in the third quartile (HR, 1.53; 95% CI, 1.07-2.18) and the fourth quartile (HR, 1.79; 95% CI, 1.16-2.75) had significantly increased risks of mortality. There was a significant dose-dependent association between increased AL and a higher risk of all-cause mortality. Furthermore, AL remained significantly associated with higher all-cause mortality after adjusting for the Charlson Comorbidity Index.
Conclusions and relevance:
These findings suggest increased AL is reflective of socioeconomic marginalization and associated with all-cause mortality in patients with breast cancer.
Researchers have proposed various explanations for the increase in singlehood in post-industrialized countries, but the questions of how singles interpret their singlehood and what social meanings they attribute to it have received less attention. Using data collected through in-depth interviews with singles from various backgrounds in Israel, this study examined whether singlehood was considered the result of individual choice or constraints. Findings revealed that most participants expressed a strong wish to marry and viewed their singlehood as the result of unfavourable life circumstances, a pattern we call ‘normative singlehood’. Their narratives were aligned with the mainstream norm that does not consider singlehood to be a legitimate way of life. By contrast, a minority, all women from very traditional backgrounds, treated singlehood in terms of deliberate choice and considered it a desired alternative to a conjugal relationship, a pattern we referred to as ‘challenging singlehood.’ These women expressed strong educational and occupational goals at the price of distancing themselves from their communities of origin. Overall, the study points to the limitations of the discourse of choice at the intersection of individualism and familism and suggests that the hegemonic status of marriage persists despite normative change in favour of deinstitutionalization.
Studies on care circulation have highlighted that the landscape of caregiving within transnational families is uneven and shaped by institutional contexts. The importance of marital status, however, remains underexplored. Drawing on interviews with middle-class, older single female migrants from Singapore who are living in China or commuting between Singapore and China, this article considers how older single female migrants’ care and ageing orientations are shaped by the gendered norms and heteronormativity underpinning migration and care regimes. We argue first that gendered norms and heteronormativity underlying migration regimes result in fewer strategies for older single female migrants to prolong migration; second, that such gendered norms and heteronormativity shape their long-distance caregiving practices, even as they live abroad; and third, that by aligning later-life aspirations with their eldercare obligations, they reinforce gendered and heteronormative expectations of caregiving. Through focusing on migration and care regimes, this article contributes to transnational scholarship on familyhood, care circulations, and ageing futures.
This chapter focuses on unmarried Muslim career women in Indonesia and other Muslim-dominant countries. Some are turning to Muslim match-making or are lured into considering polygamy. It highlights that a professional career path for Muslim women based on education and work opportunities alone has not altered the necessity to become a wife and mother to fulfil the expectations around gender roles in Islam. Being married and raising a family remain a higher priority than establishing a professional career. This chapter draws on media studies and narratives of Muslim women, showing that unmarried women are struggling to be socially and religiously accepted in society. Individualistic career choices do not guarantee the subjective wellbeing of educated Muslim women.KeywordsCareer womenIndonesiaIslamMarriagePolygamyPopular cultureSingle women
Migration is broadly interpreted to mean the movement of people for accessing better life prospects. However, when we deconstruct this phenomenon of ‘movement of people’ to the ‘movement of single women’ this brings forth intricacies of gender equations which further problematises migration outcomes, when women struggle to navigate their space and negotiate with the gendered challenges of a new city. Nevertheless, it is this nature of migration which can be explored to evaluate the empowerment of women. In this context, the article argues that when women choose to migrate as independent individuals for accessing education and employment, they experience empowerment which is manifested in their exercise of choice, autonomy and freedom in a new city.
Cultural and economic shifts such as increasing individualization and labor market uncertainty may have resulted in an increase in singlehood after leaving home. Using data from the European Social Survey, we compare cohorts born between 1930 and 1989 in 30 European countries. We show that there has been an increase in singlehood after leaving home, but primarily among women. Whereas the percentage of women who have lived in singlehood after leaving home increased with 11 percentage points from 41 to 52%, men experienced only a 3 percentage points’ increase from 59 to 62%. This stronger trend among women could be the result of their increasing educational attainment and earning capacity. Event-history analyses show that the duration of singlehood has not changed over time. We call for more research on singlehood after leaving home as an event of interest during the transition to adulthood. As more than 50% of young adults nowadays live in singlehood after leaving home, singlehood is a key part of the transition to adulthood that deserves explicit attention.
As one of the strongly devout Catholic countries in Southeast Asia, the Philippines recognizes marriage as a paramount social institution, where unmarried women face negative perceptions and social consequences. With the increasing populace of elderly people in the country, this study focused on the conditions of middle-aged (ages 45 to 65) never-married women and how the family-oriented society construes their self-perceptions. By interviewing 24 older never-married women over the age of 45, four key aspects were identified behind their lived experiences: interest in marriage, engagement in relationships, societal change, and ending in acceptance. Results open the discussion for social and individual implications.
While much research has explored contemporary constructions of young women’s sexuality, few studies have been sensitive to how age influences women’s sexuality in the context of mainstream nightlife. Drawing on sexual scripting theory, I investigate how 19 Norwegian women (ages 27–34 years) draw on and negotiate cultural scripts when making sense of their nightlife experiences with age. I found that nightlife was an increasingly difficult space to occupy, and that participating could cause tension with the women’s understandings of themselves, their behaviours and their desires in nightlife. While age-related scripts allowed the participants to criticise gender inequality in sexual interaction in nightlife, they simultaneously obscured how gender inequality in nightlife persisted in new forms with age.
Introduction: Recent developments in current societies have brought about changes in the age of marriage, so that the number of single people is increasing. These conditions are unpleasant for some people and they experience the fear of being single.
Aim: The aim of this study was to predict the fear of being single based on personality types, emotional intelligence and demographic variables.
Method: The research method was descriptive-correlational studies. The statistical population of the study included all students of the University of Tehran in the academic year of 2019-2020, who were selected by available sampling method and answered online questionnaires by calling online. Demographic questionnaires, fears of being single (2013), Myers-Briggs personality traits (1987), and Bar-on's emotional intelligence (1997) were used to collect data. The data collected were analyzed through SPSS-22 software.
Results: The results showed that there was a significant relationship between personality types, emotional intelligence and demographic variables (age, income and education) with fear of being single (P
Marriage and motherhood in Indian society delineates what womanhood should ideally be. Women lacking such relationships beyond a certain age are therefore left out in a marginalized and stigmatized state and are perceived differently from those who are married. This qualitative study rooted in grounded theory methodology attempts to explore and understand two aspects: How women perceive their singlehood and how they experience and cope with society’s perception of their single identity. Using theory of social constructionism and singlism as theoretical framework, this thesis aims at explaining how a parallel status of single women is constructed socially in relation to ideal types and how it makes women experience stigmas and differential treatment from society which is distinct from their self-perception of singlehood.
This study categorizes single women into four categories: widowed, divorced, never married and ‘abandoned’/separated women. Nine single women between the age group of 35-60 years were interviewed individually. From the data gathered it could be inferred that women have a very positive perception of their singlehood but despite of their social and financial independence and success they are still viewed as failure by society and treated as a deviant identity for which they have developed ways to cope with.
Influenced by traditional culture, socioeconomic development, and globalization, Chinese couple relationships are rapidly evolving, although some unique features remain stable. While the forms of couples in China are becoming increasingly diversified, intracultural heterosexual married couples remain the majority and “modern” couple forms such as cohabitation, intercultural marriage, and same-sex partnerships are less prevalent. Through the theoretical perspectives of human ecology and family life course development, a critical analysis of literature reveals that individual, family, and societal contexts, together with Chinese culture, interact to different degrees to influence Chinese couple relationships. Driven simultaneously by individual preference, family interests and social norms, mate selection has shifted to some extent from family arrangement and practicality, to mutual attractiveness and romance, whereas the core values of marriage have remained the same. The rigid gender roles of traditional Chinese culture still tend to decrease Chinese couples’ relationship satisfaction. In contrast, shared power and decision-making, constructive communication, as well as quality relationships with children and extended family strengthen couples’ relationship and satisfaction. Women generally report lower marital satisfaction when they have to do double shifts, taking on both paid work and work at home. Moreover, educated, unmarried women face social biases, being perceived negatively as “leftover women.” Increased gender inequality in the job market is associated with the lowered status of women, and is particularly risky for rural women, or those who mainly work in the home, as it impacts on the quality of relationships and is linked to intimate partner violence.
Evidence in this article addresses two popular political and scholarly concepts, female sexuality and sex-worker rights, which limit gender equality. Through description of interviews with 21 diverse women buying sexual services in Australia, and examination using interpretative phenomenological analysis, we introduce new ideas about women's therapeutic and pleasure-based motivations to buy sex and their concerns about their safety, money, laws, and stigma. Interviewees of the study described feeling transformative powers in pleasure as they gained skills and confidence to initiate, negotiate and control sexual activity. The experiences of the women who bought sex in this study directly challenge concepts of female sexual passivity and objectification generally and specifically in commercial sex settings. This article also promotes aspects of the sex industry as beneficial to society and demonstrates that destigmatisation and decriminalisation of the sex industry has potential to reduce harms experienced by sex workers and their clients.
This article analyzes the social interactions and social relations generated by older women in the urban public leisure spaces of Guangzhou, China. The intent is to explore the identity of older women in daily leisure spaces. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and non-participatory observation and then were analysed to explore the relation among identification, leisure spaces, and interaction. The study shows the older women’s need for self-fulfilment and social interaction, as well as the need to fill emptiness are generally unfulfilled because of the alienation of urban life – the citizens share a common sense of loneliness and senselessness. Nevertheless, the inclusiveness, openness, and group honour of urban public spaces offers a good complement to the sense of isolation. In the specific socio-cultural background of Guangzhou, older women reshape or strengthen their identities through multiple factors to achieve a strong sense of belonging in daily leisure spaces.
This article takes the example of single men who wish to become single fathers, using surrogacy, as a case study to examine the nature of legal subjectivity and the process by which persons acquire social visibility through legal mechanisms. The article investigates the notion of the absent subjects in law and examines the ways in which single men have been rendered invisible in the area of assisted reproduction. It investigates the emergence of legal subjectivity through the acquisition of rights in the context of fertility treatment. In this respect, it analyses the recent jurisprudence of the English courts and the changes in the human rights law that helped construct single men as subjects of law. The article proposes the concept of (in)visibilization for a number of reasons. It allows us to observe and examine the slow and contingent emergence of legal subjectivity in law. It illuminates ways, in which aspects of the critique of human rights as an inadequate vehicle of social inclusion can be overcome. In both respects, the concept of (in)visibilization provides a diction, in which we can analyse legally relevant experiences, which have not yet crossed the threshold into the formal system of law.
Although an increasing number of people are identifying as single in western society, gendered ideologies continue to influence women’s lives, emphasising the importance of heterosexual couplehood, marriage, family, and biological parenthood. Utilising third wave feminism as our theoretical framework, this paper explores how gendered ideologies can work together to influence adult women’s experiences with singlehood. Findings from qualitative interviews with 12 single, adult women, conducted in Ontario, Canada, reveal the ways women can face marginalisation and stigmatisation in certain leisure contexts because of their single status and how the ideology of couplehood can reinforce expectations related to familism and pronatalism for single women. Yet, the findings also illustrate the ways single women can resist these expectations through their leisure. This paper provides an important contribution to the literature, bringing attention to the complex ties between gendered ideologies and leisure for adult women.
This study examines the ways in which family and cultural context influence the romantic prospects of rural women in later life. Using a feminist life course perspective, we interviewed 14 single women over the age of 50 years who lived in rural Appalachia. Grounded theory methods were used to analyze in-depth interview data. Contextualized romantic forecasts of midlife and older rural women are presented. We found that women who were highly integrated into an extended family network, typically their own family of origin, had little if any interest in romance in later life. Women who were not highly integrated into a kin network were most hopeful about finding a romantic or marriage partner. We conclude that place-based kin networks mattered in the romantic forecasts of midlife and older single women, and discuss implications for future research.
The article investigates the consequences for feminist politics of the neoliberal turn. Feminist scholars have analysed the political changes in the situation of women that have been brought about by neoliberalism, but their assessments of neoliberalism's consequences for feminist theory and politics vary. Feminist thinkers such as Hester Eisenstein and Sylvia Walby have argued that feminism must now return its focus to socialist politics and foreground economic questions of redistribution in order to combat the hegemony of neoliberalism. Some have further identified post-structuralism and its dominance in feminist scholarship as being responsible for the debilitating move away from socialist or Marxist paradigms. I share their diagnosis to the extent that it is my contention that the rapid neoliberalization characterising the last thirty years has put women and feminist thought in a completely new political situation. However, in contrast to those feminist thinkers who put the blame for the current impasse on the rise of poststructuralist modes of thought, it is my contention that the poststructuralist turn in feminist theory in the 1980s and 1990s continues to represent an important theoretical advance. I will discuss Foucault's genealogy of neoliberalism in order to assess the ways it can contribute to feminist theory and politics today. I contend that Foucault can provide a critical diagnostic framework for feminist theory as well as for prompting new feminist political responses to the spread and dominance of neoliberalism. I will also return to Nancy Fraser and Judith's Butler's seminal debate on feminist politics in the journal Social Text (1997) in order to demonstrate that a critical analysis of the economic/cultural distinction must be central when we consider feminist forms of resistance to neoliberalism.
O conceito de masculinidade hegemônica tem influenciado os estudos de gênero em vários campos acadêmicos, mas ao mesmo tempo tem atraído um sério criticismo. Os autores traçam a origem do conceito a uma convergência de ideias no início dos anos 1980 e mapeiam as formas através das quais o conceito foi aplicado quando os estudos sobre homens e masculinidades se expandiram. Avaliando as principais críticas, os autores defendem o conceito de masculinidade como fundamental, uma vez que, na maioria das pesquisas que o opera, seu uso não é reificador nem essencialista. Entretanto, as críticas aos modelos assentados em características de gênero e às tipologias rígidas são sólidas. O tratamento do sujeito em pesquisas sobre masculinidades hegemônicas pode ser melhorado com a ajuda dos recentes modelos psicológicos, mesmo que os limites à flexibilidade discursiva devam ser reconhecidos. O conceito de masculinidade hegemônica não equivale a um modelo de reprodução social; precisam ser reconhecidas as lutas sociais nas quais masculinidades subordinadas influenciam formas dominantes. Por fim, os autores revisam o que foi confirmado por formulações iniciais (a ideia de masculinidades múltiplas, o conceito de hegemonia e a ênfase na transformação) e o que precisa ser descartado (tratamento unidimensional da hierarquia e concepções de características de gênero). Os autores sugerem a reformulação do conceito em quatro áreas: um modelo mais complexo da hierarquia de gênero, enfatizando a agência das mulheres; o reconhecimento explícito da geografia das masculinidades, enfatizando a interseccionalidade entre os níveis local, regional e global; um tratamento mais específico da encorporação1 em contextos de privilégio e poder; e uma maior ênfase na dinâmica da masculinidade hegemônica, reconhecendo as contradições internas e as possibilidades de movimento em direção à democracia de gênero.
This article uses a discourse analytic perspective to analyse sex and relationship advice in a best-selling women’s magazine. It identifies three different interpretative repertoires which together structure constructions of sexual relationships: the intimate entrepreneurship repertoire, organized around plans, goals and the scientific management of relationships; men-ology, in which women are instructed in how to learn to please men; and transforming the self, which calls on women to remodel their interior lives in order to construct a desirable subjectivity. The article considers each repertoire in turn, and also looks at how they work together in order to privilege men and heterosexuality. Discussion focuses in particular on the postfeminist nature of the advice, in which pre-feminist, feminist and anti-feminist ideas are entangled in such a way as to make gender ideologies more pernicious and difficult to contest.
Despite growing numbers of singles, the idealization of marriage and child rearing remains strong, pervasive, and largely unquestioned. Guided by life course perspective, the purpose of this article was to examine familial and societal messages women receive when not married by their late 20s to mid-30s. Using descriptive phenomenological method, the authors conducted 32 interviews with 10 middle-class, ever-single women. Respondents’ social environments were characterized by pressure to confirm to the conventional life pathway. Pressure was manifested in women feeling both highly visible and invisible. Specifically, women’s social worlds included (a) awareness of the changing reality as they became older (e.g., changing pool of eligible men, pregnancy risks), (b) reminders that they were on a different life path (i.e., visibility ) through others’ inquires and “triggers” (e.g., weddings), and (c) displacement in their families of origin (i.e., invisibility). The authors discuss the visible/invisible paradox, which appeared to be pronounced at their life stage.
There exists the idea that western societies are now postfeminist, implying that remaining differences between men and women should be understood as a result of the free exercise of individual choice. Yet this postfeminist promise of liberation is overwhelmingly packaged within the crushingly cruel beauty images that western women are judged against and incited to emulate. Theorizing female agency in light of choice and liberation discourses has been the topic of much recent feminist literature, to which this article seeks to contribute. We utilized a feminist post-structuralist framework to examine how young Australian women position themselves as freely choosing and able to throw off oppression. We discuss these findings in relation to the conception of the neoliberal feminine subject; described as someone who playfully expresses herself by freely choosing her level of participation in socially promoted beauty practices; in turn resulting in a resistance to being seen as inflexible, or critical of wider social influences
A widespread form of bias has slipped under our cultural and academic radar. People who are single are targets of singlism: negative stereotypes and discrimination. Compared to married or coupled people, who are often described in very positive terms, singles are assumed to be immature, maladjusted, and self-centered. Although the perceived differences between people who have and have not married are large, the actual differences are not. Moreover, there is currently scant recognition that singlism exists, and when singlism is acknowledged, it is often accepted as legitimate.
The authors argue that if sociologists are to understand the current state, and likely future, of intimacy and care, we should decentre the ‘family’ and the heterosexual couple in our intellectual imaginaries. In the context of processes of individualization much that matters to people in terms of intimacy and care increasingly takes place beyond the ‘family’, between partners who are not living together ‘as family’, and within networks of friends. The first section of the article provides a critique of family sociology and the sociology of gender for the heteronormative frameworks within which they operate. It proposes an extension of the framework within which contemporary transformations in the realm of intimacy are to be analysed, and it suggests that there is a need for research focusing on the cultures of intimacy and care inhabited by those living at the cutting edge of social change. In the second part of the article, the authors draw upon their own research on the most ‘individualized’ sector of the population – adults who are not living with a partner. They explore contemporary cultures of intimacy and care among this group through a number of case studies, and argue that two interrelated processes characterize these cultures: centring on friendship, and decentring sexual relationships.
This article argues that there has been a significant shift in advertising representations of women in recent years, such that rather than being presented as passive objects of the male gaze, young women in adverts are now frequently depicted as active, independent and sexually powerful. This analysis examines contemporary constructions of female sexual agency in advertisements examining three recognizable `figures': the young, heterosexually desiring `midriff', the vengeful woman set on punishing her partner or ex-partner for his transgressions, and the `hot lesbian', almost always entwined with her beautiful Other or double. Using recent examples of adverts, the article asks how this apparent `agency' and `empowerment' should be understood.
Drawing on accounts of the incorporation or recuperation of feminist ideas in advertising, the article takes a critical approach to these representations, examining their exclusions, their constructions of gender relations and heteronormativity, and the way power is figured within them. A feminist poststructuralist approach is used to interrogate the way in which `sexual agency' becomes a form of regulation in these adverts that requires the re-moulding of feminine subjectivity to fit the current postfeminist, neoliberal moment in which young women should not only be beautiful but sexy, sexually knowledgeable/practised and always `up for it'.
The article makes an original contribution to debates about representations of gender in advertising, to poststructuralist analyses about the contemporary operation of power, and to writing about female `sexual agency' by suggesting that `voice' or `agency' may not be the solution to the `missing discourse of female desire' but may in fact be a technology of discipline and regulation.
Modern societies have reconciled the dilemma between self-interest and caring for others by dividing women and men into different moral categories. Women have been expected to seek personal development by caring for others, while men care for others by sharing the rewards of their independent work achievements. Changes in work and family life have undermined this framework but have failed to offer a clear avenue for creating new resolutions. Instead, contradictory social changes have produced new moral dilemmas. Women must now seek economic self-sufficiency even as they continue to bear responsibility for the care of others. Men can reject the obligation to provide for others, but they face new pressures to become more involved fathers and partners. Facing these dilemmas, young women and men must develop innovative moral strategies to renegotiate work-family conflicts and transform traditional views of gender, but persisting institutional obstacles thwart their emerging aspirations to balance personal autonomy with caring for others. To overcome these obstacles, we need to create more humane, less gendered theoretical and social frameworks for understanding and apportioning moral obligation.
Since Michelle Fine’s (1988) paper on the ‘missing discourse of desire’ in sexuality education, researchers have been investigating where and how women talk about their desire. Online weblogs have become a popular forum for the discussion of sexuality, particularly among women, and have been identified as one potential ‘safe space’ for the discussion of sexual desire. In this article, I use thematic analysis to explore how women write about their sexual desire in online weblogs. In this brief report, I present excerpts from one of the identified themes: women’s desire as active and embodied. The findings are considered in terms of masculine and feminine sexualities and postfeminism.
We suggest that single adults in contemporary American society are targets of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination, a phenomenon we will call singlism. Singlism is an outgrowth of a largely uncontested set of beliefs, the Ideology of Marriage and Family. Its premises include the assumptions that the sexual partnership is the one truly important peer relationship and that people who have such partnerships are happier and more fulfilled than those who do not. We use published claims about the greater happiness of married people to illustrate how the scientific enterprise seems to be influenced by the ideology. We propose that people who are single - particularly women who have always been single - fare better than the ideology would predict because they do have positive, enduring, and important interpersonal relationships. The persistence of singlism is especially puzzling considering that actual differences based on civil (marital) status seem to be qualified and small, the number of singles is growing, and sensitivity to other varieties of prejudice is acute. By way of explanation, we consider arguments from evolutionary psychology, attachment theory, a social problems perspective, the growth of the cult of the couple, and the appeal of an ideology that offers a simple and compelling worldview.
Single Women in Popular Culture demonstrates how single women continue to be figures of profound cultural anxiety. Examining a wide range of popular media forms, this is a timely, insightful and politically engaged book, exploring the ways in which postfeminism limits the representation of single women in popular culture.
This book critically assessesthird-wave feminist strategies for advancing a feminist 'politics of the self' within the late modern, postfeminist gender order - a context where gender equality has been mainstreamed, feminism has been dismissed, and a neoliberal culture of self-management has become firmly entrenched.
Congratulations to Dr. McRobbie! This book has been named to the list of books for the 2009 Critics Choice Book Award of the American Educational Studies Association (AESA).These essays show Angela McRobbie reflecting on a range of issues which have political consequence for women, particularly young women, in a context where it is frequently assumed that progress has been made in the last 30 years, and that with gender issues now 'mainstreamed' in cultural and social life, the moment of feminism per se is now passed. McRobbie trenchantly argues that it is precisely on these grounds that invidious forms of gender -re-stabilisation are able to be re-established. Consumer culture, she argues, encroaches on the terrain of so called female freedom, appears supportive of female success only to tie women into new post-feminist neurotic dependencies. These nine essays span a wide range of topics, including - the UK government's 'new sexual contract' to young women, - popular TV makeover programmes, - feminist theories of backlash and the 'undoing' of sexual politics, - feminism in a global frame- the 'illegible rage' underlying contemporary femininities.
In contrast to claims that feminism no longer retains currency in late modernity third-wave feminism asserts that feminism continues to be both possible and necessary.1 This position proceeds on the basis that the applicability of second-wave feminism to contemporary gender relations and social conditions is limited because the lived experience of femininity has become increasingly complex. Accordingly, third-wave feminism claims to offer a corrective to this situation by allowing women to develop their relationship to feminism in ways that are more relevant to the contradictions which characterize their lives. In reconstituting the subject of feminism for a ‘new generation’, in often ambiguous ways, an interesting challenge to established definitions of feminist values and practices is waged. However, this challenge is not without problems or conceptual inconsistencies. This chapter will consider what third-wave feminism offers to our understanding of new femininities emerging in late modernity and the relationship these emerging subjectivities have to both feminism and postfeminism.
Discourses of sexual agency have been seen as central to the development of new femininities, part of a broader shift in which older markers of femininity such as homemaking skills and maternal instincts have been joined by those of image creation, body work and sexual desire. This chapter examines debates about women’s sexual oppression and agency, with particular reference to their objectification and subjectification in popular cultural forms. It considers how useful these debates are in the contemporary Western context where media and communication technologies are developing very rapidly, offering women unprecedented access to new forms of cultural production, most obviously online in blogs, chat rooms and communities. It situates these technologies in the broader cultural context of sexualization and shifts in the way visibility and celebrity, sexual display and agency are conceived. It asks how these developments impact on the representation of women’s sexuality and what opportunities they provide for women to become involved in constructing and presenting their sexual selves. Focusing particularly on alternative pornography, it asks how we can develop an understanding of sexual agency in this context and how cultural and technological developments potentially make space for the representation of new constructions of sexuality and femininity.
Machine derived contents note: Contents -- Chapter 1: The Rise of Homo Sentimentalis -- Chapter 2: Suffering, Emotional Fields and Emotional Capital -- Chapter 3: Romantic Webs.
Michelle Fine argues that the anti-sex rhetoric surrounding sex education and school-based health clinics does little to enhance the development of sexual responsibility and subjectivity in adolescents. Despite substantial evidence on the success of both school-based health clinics and access to sexuality information, the majority of public schools do not sanction or provide such information. As a result, female students, particularly low-income ones, suffer most from the inadequacies of present sex education policies. Current practices and language lead to increased experiences of victimization, teenage pregnancy, and increased dropout rates, and consequently, ". . . combine to exacerbate the vulnerability of young women whom schools, and the critics of sex education and school-based health clinics, claim to protect." The author combines a thorough review of the literature with her research in public schools to make a compelling argument for "sexuality education" that fosters not only the full developmen...
Construction of adult life course and identity has typically been built around norms of partnering and parenting, placing single women who do not have children outside the norm. Studies undertaken with single women have found that relationship status was a key factor in their identity construction. In this study, we conducted semi-structured interviews with five single women without children living in Australia. Drawing on critical discursive psychology, we found that participants negotiated two contesting discourses to construct their identities: the Heterosexual Relationship and Family Life discourse and the Independent Single Woman discourse. In crafting identities, tensions were identified between the positioning of self and the positioning of self by others, particularly with respect to the Heterosexual Relationship and Family Life discourse. This was evident in some women contesting the positions afforded by the discourse, instead drawing on an asset identity. This asset identity enabled the women to pursue positive life opportunities.
In this article theories of gender hegemony are utilized to assess how changing norms impact upon the binary construction of gender. Transformed gender ideals have materialized in the figure of the 'empowered' and autonomous yet reassuringly feminine woman. Despite the assimilation of key attributes associated with masculinity this particular expression of idealized femininity does not necessarily rework dominant perceptions of gender difference and their organization into a relation of hierarchical complementarity. Through the review of key empirical studies which have examined identity work undertaken by young women and young men as they negotiate idealized gender norms, this article examines how hegemonic relations are reproduced alongside the production of plural femininities and masculinities. This analysis is discussed in relation to changes associated with a move from a private to a public gender regime, a perceived feminization of the public sphere, and the complication of contradictory gender ideals.
The concept of hegemonic masculinity has influenced gender studies across many academic fields but has also attracted serious criticism. The authors trace the origin of the concept in a convergence of ideas in the early 1980s and map the ways it was applied when research on men and masculinities expanded. Evaluating the principal criticisms, the authors defend the underlying concept of masculinity, which in most research use is neither reified nor essentialist. However, the criticism of trait models of gender and rigid typologies is sound. The treatment of the subject in research on hegemonic masculinity can be improved with the aid of recent psychological models, although limits to discursive flexibility must be recognized. The concept of hegemonic masculinity does not equate to a model of social reproduction; we need to recognize social struggles in which subordinated masculinities influence dominant forms. Finally, the authors review what has been confirmed from early formulations (the idea of multiple masculinities, the concept of hegemony, and the emphasis on change) and what needs to be discarded (onedimensional treatment of hierarchy and trait conceptions of gender). The authors suggest reformulation of the concept in four areas: a more complex model of gender hierarchy, emphasizing the agency of women; explicit recognition of the geography of masculinities, emphasizing the interplay among local, regional, and global levels; a more specific treatment of embodiment in contexts of privilege and power; and a stronger emphasis on the dynamics of hegemonic masculinity, recognizing internal contradictions and the possibilities of movement toward gender democracy.
The purpose of this article is to advance a new understanding of gender as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction. To do so entails a critical assessment of existing perspectives on sex and gender and the introduction of important distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender. We argue that recognition of the analytical independence of these concepts is essential for understanding the interactional work involved in being a gendered person in society. The thrust of our remarks is toward theoretical reconceptualization, but we consider fruitful directions for empirical research that are indicated by our formulation.
The multimodal nature of web pages enables them to interweave text, images, colour and other graphical material to create discursive contexts which may be difficult to identify or challenge. Multimodal discourse analysis provides a tool for deconstructing such websites. This paper examines websites that promote the growing practice of female genital cosmetic surgery, in particular labial reduction or labiaplasty. We examine the ways in which four Australian cosmetic surgery websites normalise unnecessary surgical intervention. From our multimodal critical discourse analysis, three themes emerged – ‘pathologising the normal’, ‘normalising modification’ and ‘cosmetic surgery is easy’. All were embedded in a neoliberal discourse of individual choice, self-improvement and objectification, through text and images that medicalised normal women's bodies, normalised the use of surgery to fit a cultural ideal of beauty and stressed the rhetoric of choice, empowerment and agency, thus creating an ideological foundation and justification for cosmetic surgery.
Given the increasing trend of women delaying (or forgoing) marriage and the minimal scholarship on women’s reflections of their life course trajectories, the purpose of the study was to examine the lived experience of White, college-educated women aged 28 – 34 years who have not married. Using descriptive phenomenology methodology, 32 interviews were conducted with 10 never-married women. Results suggested that their experiences were marked by uncertainty. The women were intensely reflecting on their life pathways, evaluating themselves, and enacting strategies to manage the pervasive uncertainty they felt. Implications about life course expectations and decisions, coping strategies, and experiences of “missed” transitions and related consequences are discussed.
This article describes the “Standard North American Family” or SNAF as an ideological code. An ideological code is analogous to a genetic code, reproducing its characteristic forms and order in multiple and various discursive settings. Its operation in two settings is explored. The first is the writer's experience (shared with Alison Griffith) of designing and carrying out a study of the work that women do as mothers in relation to their children's schooling. Although the researchers were committed to feminist methods and to a critical perspective, SNAF reproduced itself in their conceptualization, their interview practices, and in how women responded to them. The second is William Julius Wilson's consideration of the Black family in his study The Truly Disadvantaged. An analysis of his text demonstrates its SNAF-governed order and how its representational credibility is sustained by the SNAF-generated statistics of government agencies such as the U.S. Bureau of Census. It is suggested that such ideological codes may have a significant political effect by importing representational order even into the texts of those who are overtly opposed to the representations they generate.
This project explored young women’s identity constructions in the context of competing and changing cultural ideals of womanhood, such as feminist discourses and neoliberal discourses of choice and individualism. Specifically, we were interested in how young women attending university in the new millennium envisioned their futures. Thirty women, aged 18–26, who were university students taking courses in Psychology, participated in 15 research conversations with two participants and an interviewer. Using discourse analysis, we show how the young women routinely privileged the ideal of women as wives and mothers, yet positioned themselves as autonomous individuals making free choices and, thereby, personally responsible for managing the problems in their lives. They also ignored gender politics by avoiding or glossing over talk about women’s inequality and criticisms of traditional family and workplace arrangements.
This article suggests that looking at the ways in which subjects relate to and internalise gender norms is a fruitful way to explore socially constructed differences between masculinity and femininity in the U.S. Throughout this article, I am in dialogue with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity as I focus on practices of subject formation that I denote as ‘logics’ of subject formation. I propose several key ways to distinguish a feminine logic of subject formation from a masculine logic of subjectivity. I suggest that femininity is a multiplicitous, self-proliferating strategy that forecloses truth as a means for achieving selfhood. Alternatively, I postulate that masculinity tends to masquerade as an (oftentimes failed) achievement that is singular and self-consolidating and that generates truth as a means for realising selfhood. In order to contextualise these distinctions between masculinity and femininity, I look to the recent influx of American women into masculine-marked domains such as the workforce, politics and sports without a corresponding entrance of men into feminine-marked domains. Known as the stalled gender revolution, these shifts, I argue, have created the context for the gendered divergences in subjectivity I suggest here. Focusing on examples of women in sports to illustrate these distinctions, I provide a detailed characterisation of femininity as a logic of subject formation. As such, I argue that this approach to gender may provide relevant insights to understanding gender practice, agency and resistance, particularly with respect to Butler’s formulation of gender performativity and subversion. I conclude by providing some preliminary thoughts on how to re-envision agency and subversion in light of the proposed framework.
This paper presents the globalization of elite single professional women (SPW) as the first new global sociological phenomenon of the twenty-first century. We trace the economic roots of the phenomenon and how female empowerment interacts with the psychological prerequisites for mating. We then trace how the phenomenon is being expressed outside of the United States, in India, Poland, and Germany. We conclude by putting these observations into a historical perspective and briefly listing possible strategies for responding, adapting, and maximizing one's options.
This paper investigates changing modes of femininity. It asks: What are the discourses and discursive practices within which new femininities are constructed? What are the social conditions in which they emerge? How are these negotiated and lived by girls? What do these stories tell us about the complications of subject formation and what it means to be a “girl” in “global times”. Drawing on a school-community project with a racially diverse group of girls, aged 12–14 years, the paper analyses a series of fictional stories that the girls wrote for the characters of a collaboratively produced video. It is my argument that girls live the effects of neoliberal discourses of individuality in particularly complicated ways. This is due to the ways in which “woman” and “individual” have historically been constituted through a series of binary oppositions including those of: femininity and masculinity, girlhood and adolescence, womanhood and personhood and femininity and rationality. I suggest that while traditional femininity is being undone through its inclusion in discourses of individualism, rationality and adulthood, it is also reinscribed through an ever increasing array of contradictions, the juggling of which have always constituted femininity.
Historically singleness has operated as a marginalized status while heterosexual couples have occupied a privileged position that confers upon its inhabitants a range of social, economic and symbolic rewards. However, demographics now indicate that single-person households are the fastest growing household formation in the UK, signalling the beginning of what some have termed `the singles' century'. This article will examine how the stigmatized status of singleness is defined and negotiated within a culture that privileges couple relationships. Consideration will be given to whether it is possible for singleness to resist and transcend its `outsider' status within a context where individuals are purportedly able to exercise a greater degree of choice in how they organize their sexual lives. Narratives that single people (across different sexual identities) construct about couple relationships and their own cultures of intimacy, constituted to a significant extent through friendships, are analysed. These narratives indicate that positive single identities are possible despite heteronormative regulations which privilege couple relationships.
This article argues that, particularly in the last decade, an address by government to young women in the 'advanced democracies' of the west, and in this case in the UK, entails the provision of what might be understood as a new sexual contract. In the post-feminist guise of equality, as though it is already achieved, young women are attributed with capacity. They are urged to become hyper-active across three key sites where their new found visibility then becomes most manifest. Within the field of consumer culture this takes the form of the 'post-feminist masquerade' where the fashion and beauty system appears to displace traditional modes of patriarchal authority. Likewise the emergence of the 'phallic girl' appears to have gained access to sexual freedoms previously the preserve of men, the terms and conditions of which require control of fertility and carefully planned parenthood. The new sexual contract is also embedded within the fields of education and employment. Here too young women (top girls) are now understood to be ideal subjects of female success, exemplars of the new competitive meritocracy. These incitements to young women to become wage-earning subjects are complex strategies of governmentality, the new 'career girl' in the affluent west finds her counterpart, the 'global girl' factory worker, in the rapidly developing factory systems of the impoverished countries of the so-called Third World. Underpinning this attribution of capacity and the seeming gaining of freedoms is the requirement that the critique of hegemonic masculinity associated with feminism and the women's movement is abandoned. The sexual contract now embedded in political discourse and in popular culture permits the renewed institutionalisation of gender inequity and the re-stabilisation of gender hierarchy by means of a generational-specific address which interpellates young women as subjects of capacity. With government now taking it upon itself to look after the young woman, so that she is seemingly well-cared for, this is also an economic rationality which envisages young women as endlessly working on a perfectible self, for whom there can be no space in the busy course of the working day for a renewed feminist politics.
The prevalence of the discourse of ‘successful girls’ (and failing boys) in Australia and internationally has been widely documented. Against the much‐vaunted lifting of barriers to opportunity for girls and women, it might reasonably be expected that their educational experiences and career paths are expressive of wider opportunities, greater confidence and autonomy. This article draws on qualitative research with young women in regional Australia to argue that supposedly outmoded but evidently durable patterns of educational and occupational experience remain and are accompanied by new burdens and anxieties. Importantly, young women are now obliged to account for these unfashionable arrangements, using the ubiquitous belief in choice and the possibility of self‐actualisation to demonstrate the volition and agency deemed appropriate to a post‐feminist ethos. Thus, techniques of reflective selfhood and neoliberal accountability are mobilised to justify social reproduction, while at the same time showcasing invigorated notions of meritocracy and social mobility.
The pervasive and popularised concept of a freshly modernised and progressive world for girls and young women has been ushered in by theories of post-industrial individualisation, neo-liberalism and its dovetailing with liberal variants of feminism. Such optimistic notions of new-found freedom for women in Western democracies celebrate the shrinking of imposed constraints and exclusions and the enthusiastic endorsement of individual choice. This article reports on recently completed empirical research in an Australian context which questions just how dramatically the lives of young women have changed. It identifies the role that the lauded concept of choice plays in overstating women's advancement and disguising socially generated inequality. In particular, young women in this study comprehend domestic violence, unequal parenting and housework as matters of choice, while also implicitly understanding that they do not live up to the imagined unencumbered rational choice individuals of liberalism.
The implications of an invigorated conservative, masculinist agenda disguised in a women's rights discourse are discussed. Feminists are confronted with a changed socio-political climate where the subordination of girls and women is allowed to occur more covertly within a framework of ostensible commitment to equality, the valorisation of choice and through seductive incitements to individual responsibility.
This article argues that marriage has under- gone a process of deinstitutionalization—a weakening of the social norms that define part- ners' behavior—over the past few decades. Ex- amples are presented involving the increasing number and complexity of cohabiting unions and the emergence of same-sex marriage. Two transitions in the meaning of marriage that occurred in the United States during the 20th century have created the social context for deinstitutionalization. The first transition, noted by Ernest Burgess, was from the institutional marriage to the companionate marriage. The second transition was to the individualized mar- riage in which the emphasis on personal choice and self-development expanded. Although the practical importance of marriage has declined, its symbolic significance has remained high and may even have increased. It has become a marker of prestige and personal achievement. Examples of its symbolic significance are presented. The implications for the current state of marriage and its future direction are discussed. A quarter century ago, in an article entitled ''Remarriage as an Incomplete Institution'' (Cherlin, 1978), I argued that American society lacked norms about the way that members of stepfamilies should act toward each other. Par- ents and children in first marriages, in contrast, could rely on well-established norms, such as when it is appropriate to discipline a child. I predicted that, over time, as remarriage after divorce became common, norms would begin to emerge concerning proper behavior in step- families—for example, what kind of relationship a stepfather should have with his stepchildren. In other words, I expected that remarriage would become institutionalized, that it would become more like first marriage. But just the opposite has happened. Remarriage has not become more like first marriage; rather, first marriage has become more like remarriage. Instead of the institutionalization of remarriage,
Interviews are reported in which heterosexual women construct unmarried status as a temporary stage, preparatory to marriage, or the consequence of failure to maintain heterosexual relationships. Remaining single in later life is constructed as a threat, and older single women are constructed as lonely and isolated. Women construct themselves as responsible for the ending of past relationships, and report having been held to account in this way by significant others. It is argued that these accounts reflect the discourses of heterosexual romantic quest, and the gendered division of emotional labour in marriage. Participants' accounts are characterized by heterosexism and ageism, and the authors discuss issues of collusion with these in the collection of data.
Based on empirical research with 17-19 year olds, this article explores young people's understandings of themselves as sexual in relation to dominant discourse of (hetero)sexuality. It is concerned with providing empirical evidence of resistance in young people's constitution of their sexual subjectivities. The research findings suggest that young people generally draw upon dominant discourses of (hetero)sexuality in their talk about themselves as sexual. However some took up subject positions that involved more resistant conceptions of the sexual self. For some young people this took the form of simultaneously accommodating and resisting subject positions offered by traditional discourses of (hetero)sexuality. It is argued that the potential to take up more resistant subject positions was partly contingent upon young people's location in contexts that offered access to, or opened space for, other ways of constituting themselves as sexual.
This article draws on a life history study to illustrate the ways in which young women currently occupy more than one subject position in relation to gender, equality and feminism. In particular, efforts are made to explore the tendency for young women to support an equal opportunities framework yet also distance themselves from feminism, and in particular the subjectivity of ‘feminist’. It is suggested that the women in the study were juggling different subject positions simultaneously. Whilst the data reveals that the young women were negotiating their lives around gendered dynamics, they were also constructing a narrative wherein they described gender inequality as a thing of the past. This narrative was heavily informed by a position of individualism which ostensibly opened up ‘new choices’ to their life paths, but simultaneously influenced the ways in which they could recognise and resist gendered inequalities in their lives. The article concludes by considering the implications this has for the ways in which these young women identified with the wider collective movement of feminism.