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Title
Author(s)
Women Unbound: Single Women in Ireland
Byrne, Anne
Publication
Date
2007
Publication
Information
Byrne, Anne. 2008. Women Unbound: Single Women in
Ireland. In Women On Their Own, edited by V. YansMcLoughlin and R. Bell. NJ: Rutgers University Press.
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Rutgers University Press
http://hdl.handle.net/10379/213
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29
Single Women in Ireland
Anne Byrne
National University of Ireland, Galway
Published as
Byrne, Anne (2008) ’Women Unbound: Single Women in Ireland’ in YansMcLoughlin, Virginia and Bell, Rudy (eds) Women Alone. Rutgers
University Press: NJ pp 29-73.
30
The mid twentieth century in Ireland marked a paradigmatic shift from a
traditional, family-based, rural, mono-cultural society with circumscribed roles for
women, unequal gender relations, and authoritative male privilege, to a rapidly
urbanising society embracing individualisation, equality, diversity, and choice. The
accounts of thirty single women, born in the 1950s and 1960s, reveal the identity effects
of the ideology of marriage and family that continues to resonate in contemporary Irish
society despite the economic and social forces of modernity. Familistic ideologies
positively support constructions of womanhood as married and mother, a context in
which singlehood and the opposition between woman identity and single identity are
problematic. In the absence of positive and powerful counter narratives, singlehood is
disparaged and stigmatized constraining the identity possibilities for all women.
This essay examines accounts of how women make sense of their single identity
in an Irish sociological study of singles women’s lives. Utilizing a framework from a
similar British study (from a psychosocial perspective) the concept of interpretative
repertoires and their constraining effects is explored.i Some women speak of own
singleness as failing to realise womanhood as traditionally endorsed. Others focus on the
freedom that singleness brings, extolling the advantages of being alone and the autonomy
of single independence. Accounts from both studies show that a negative construction of
31
singleness disarms the capacity for innovatory action. A positive construction likewise
constrains, so that possibilities for expanding the meaning of singleness to include
intimacy and independence are not realised. Arguably, the identity of single women, of
who and what one can be, is constrained at the ideological level by opposing societal
accounts of womanhood and singleness and constrained at the personal level in internal
dialogues constructing singleness as either negative or positive.
Despite these constraints, evidence from the Irish study suggests that awareness of
the contradictions combined with self-reflection enables women’s capacity for
transformatory action and change. Four possible responses to opposing constructions of
womanhood and singlehood are noted, compliance, acceptance, resistance, and
transformation. Though a few are “less successful” as single women, most women work
the available constructions, refusing to be constrained by them and talk with awareness
about the experiences, difficulties and contradictions of being “on the outside.” In
recognising the internal contradictions in own narratives and working with the polarities
of woman identity and single identity, many women devise alternative ways of being
single arguing that singleness will become an acceptable social identity for women in
Ireland.
Effects of Ideology of Marriage and Family
While the ideology of marriage and family has a long history and special
significance in traditional, rural, familistic societies, familism, the “propagation of
politically pro-family ideas,” has come under much pressure from the individualistic
tendencies of modern industrial societies.ii Historically, there is diversity in family forms
and research evidence supports the view that kin as well as non-kin relationships can
32
promote well-being. Nonetheless, the family unit of the heterosexual couple with
dependent children only, based on love, marriage and reproduction is the ideal and highly
rewarded social form. “The family” has prime responsibility for maintaining emotional,
nurturing relationships, for reproduction, socialisation and care of children, for promoting
individual well-being and for encouraging normative behaviours such as sexual
exclusivity with marital partners only. The regulatory aspect of family life posits singles
as outside the control of the family system and as being less invested in family matters.
Bella DePaulo and Wendy Morris note that the idea of a happy single person challenges
the security of the “meaning and hope” offered by an American cultural worldview that is
pro-family. The “happy single” is also a challenge to the intensive, exclusive coupling
demanded by this system.iii
Accounting for the privileged, and idealised, status of family in private and public
life, Bourdieu observes that this ideal model of human relations provides the “principles
for the construction and evaluation of every social relationship.”iv Relationships forged
beyond the family model are ignored, deprecated, or rendered invisible. The perception
of family as a naturally occurring universal social category arises, according to Bourdieu,
because the external, objective category “family” is the basis for an internal subjective
category “which is the matrix of countless representations and actions (e.g. marriages)
which help to reproduce the objective social category.”v In Bourdieu’s account, single
women are specifically mentioned as a group marked by “social suffering,” a
consequence of their non-conformity to the cultural hegemony of marriage and family.
Interviewing single women in France, he notes that women suffer harassment, are not
taken seriously, and regarded as inadequate or incomplete persons because they fail to
33
“fall into line, to settle down and start a family.” Despite the perceived “naturalness” of
family as a social institution, social grouping, and mental structure in an age of
individualism, it requires extensive maintenance, “the forces of fusion (especially the
affective one) must endlessly counteract the forces of fission.”vi Single women are a
“threat” to family; perhaps because they are perceived to be forces of fission.
Neither is the state insignificant in supporting and perpetuating familism,
performing “countless constituting acts which constitute family identity as one of the
most powerful principles of perception of the social world and one of the most real social
units.”vii Eileen Connolly’s work on state gender systems characterizes the gender regime
in Ireland up to the late 1950s as marked by gender difference, hierarchical ranking of
male and female, separation of public and private spheres, and subjugation of individual
rights within the family.viii The gender system endorsed male privilege and authority in
political, social, economic, legal, and family life, deeply circumscribing women’s roles
and life options. Profound struggles to reform the gendered state took place up to the
1990s, but as Connolly notes, once a gender contract is established it proves difficult to
alter. The Irish State continues to privilege the marital family, discriminating against nonmarital families and single people. As a woman remarked in the Irish study:
I think everybody would much prefer if everybody else got married and it
all worked all the time… there is this feeling that the whole society
revolves around marriage. . . the assumption is, that this is the norm and
everybody else is abnormal because we [single people] are not married
and we don’t have children. Interview with Anna, age 42, Ireland.ix
34
“Singlism,” a term coined by DePaulo and Morris to characterise the stereotyping,
prejudice, and discrimination to which, they argue, single people are subject, is a
consequence of the uncontested set of beliefs associated with the ideology of marriage
and family. The ideology of marriage and family is uncontested, they argue, as it offers
“a simple and satisfying worldview” for both citizen and scientist.x Singlism is based on
the assumption “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.”xi Permeated by the ideology of marriage and family, scientific and popular
discourse supports the view that married people are happier than those who are not
married, but asks DePaulo and Morris why then are singles not miserable? Disputing the
significance of the relationship between civil status and happiness, DePaulo and Morris
present a robust counter argument to show that single people do have significant, lasting
interpersonal relationships and live, happy, content, joyful and fulfilled lives.
Puzzled about the persistence of single stigma, Anne Byrne and Deborah Carr
propose that singles are caught in a normative and cultural lag, “although demographic
patterns and other major social changes are creating an historical and social context
where singles may lead lives that are as rich and fulfilling as married persons, cultural
values and attitudes still blithely endorse and perpetuate the ideology of marriage and
family.”xii Byrne and Carr argue that pro-marriage ideology will persist until the
privileged social status and institution of marriage is recognized and interrogated; until
the embedded inequalities and flaws in the institution of marriage are recognised as
“public issues” rather than “private troubles,” and that the adaptive and creative ways that
unmarried persons construct and maintain “family” and other significant relationships are
35
investigated. They propose that “singleness studies” as a field of academic inquiry may
sensitise science and society to even unintentional singlism.
In terms of social identities, single women have to negotiate between two strong
conceptions of womanhood: 1) a patriarchal conception as heterosexual, married and
reproductive, and 2) a conception of single womanhood as lack, as deviant and a threat to
the patriarchal order. Sociological, (and to a lesser extent historical and
psychoanalytical,) studies of single women provide us with a variety of categories and
labels which either purport to explain women’s choices to remain unmarried or reveal the
effects of prejudice suffered by those who do not conform. A single woman is variously
constructed as an old maid, a spinster, an androgyne, a rebel, a marriage resister, sad,
mad or bad, embittered, sexless, surplus, celibate, virtuous, a menace, homosexual, a
bachelor woman, or an independent woman. The stigmatizing of single women’s
reluctance or failure to construct their womanhood on the basis of a recognised, enduring
socially approved sexual connection with a man, demonstrates the extent to which
heterosexuality matters in dominant modes of constructing womanhood. On the flip side,
the valuing of independence and equality as a basis for composing the self is
fundamentally challenging to concepts of dependence and inequality, implicit to
male/female heterosexual relations. Single women are faced with the challenge of
composing coherent self identities, acceptable social identities, negotiating the space
between woman perceived as wife/mother/carer and connected to others and woman
perceived as independent, a chooser and separate from others. Above all else, singleness
is an identity issue.
Single Women in Irish Society
36
Research on single women’s identities in Irish society is scant and focuses on the
indigenous population.xiii Byrne and Breeda Duggan maintain that approved social
identities for women continue to be based on marriage and motherhood, despite Ireland’s
membership of the European Community, the influence of the Women’s Movement and
economic and educational expansion in women’s choices in contemporary Irish
society.xiv Marriage is perceived as a more desirable option for women with little cultural
validation for singleness. Duggan signals the difficulties involved in devising alternative
identities. “It is difficult to resist the cultural and ideological pressures and to maintain a
positive sense of choice and independence in the face of negative attitudes. Despite the
greater sense of independence in the single or lesbian identity, the effects of the social
prejudices continue to place constraints on the capacity for greater self determination.”xv
Constrained by the conception of singleness as a failed identity it is impossible to
conceive of singleness as a self-conscious choice. Duggan considers those who “choose”
a different lifestyle as change agents engaged in transformatory action and advises further
research to investigate how women resist cultural and ideological pressures and
“maintain a positive sense of choice and independence in the face of negative
attitudes.”xvi
Mairead Flynn concludes that being married and older contributes to selfactualization in her comparison of single women and married women in Ireland.
Measuring fulfilment of love/belonging needs and self-esteem, older married women
score highest, followed by older single women, then younger single women and younger
married women.xvii More young, single women (about two-thirds) perceive themselves
37
as less self-fulfilled compared to the other categories and none of the single women
regard themselves as “very self-fulfilled.”
Despite extensive changes in Irish culture wrought by rapid modernization, the
ideology of marriage and family continues to spread “ideological effects” evident at the
social, structural and individual level.xviii Ideology is implicated in knowledge
production; those in control can prioritize their own truth claims “thus limiting the
formulation, availability, credibility of alternative accounts which may more fully reflect
the interests of subordinated groups.”xix Interested in the effects of ideology on
individual identities I spoke with thirty “always single” women on singleness and identity
issues. Women’s narrative accounts reveal not only extensive stigma, but also the
difficulties in making sense of being a single woman in contemporary Ireland.xx
Ambivalence, contradictions, and confusion surrounds single identity. I was interested in
women’s descriptions of themselves, reflections on their own and others’ perceptions of
singleness and the consequences of dominant conceptions of womanhood for single
identity. Other themes explored in the Irish study are the benefits and challenges of
independence, perceptions and significance of marital, sexual, mother-child, family and
friend relationships, prioritising caring work, career work and partner-seeking work and
singleness as an acceptable social identity.
Interpretative Repertoires: British Study of Singles
As in Ireland, Reynolds and Wetherall show that singleness in Britain is a
“troubled category (difficult to align oneself with).”xxi Part of the difficulty they observe,
is that it is a social category, delimiting the single from the married for example, and a
socially constructed, social category that has varied meanings, culturally and historically.
38
Singleness is also a discourse, regulating conduct and is a set of narratives through which
subject positions and identity can be managed. Reynolds and Wetherall call for a feminist
politics of singleness to enable women to position themselves “in more enabling
ways.”xxii From a social psychological and discourse perspective, their study on the
meaning of singleness and identity management provides a valuable comparative
framework for the study of singles in Ireland. The thirty participants in the Reynolds and
Wetherall study are mainly heterosexual, middle-class, white, single women aged
between thirty and sixty, living in Britain, eight of whom are mothers. Unlike the Irish
study, which focuses on the “always single,” Reynolds and Wetherall include “single
again” women. They acknowledge that the sample is diverse in terms of marital and
motherhood status but stress that they are looking for the main patterns in how women
speak about singleness and identity issues.
Reynolds and Wetherall identify the concept of interpretative repertoires as “the
recognisable routines of arguments, descriptions, and evaluations found in people’s talk. .
. the building blocks through which people develop accounts and versions of significant
events and through which they perform social life.”xxiii Accounts are variable and
inconsistent allowing ideological dilemmas to develop as discrepancies in and between
accounts are talked about or reflected upon. Reynolds and Wetherall identify four
repertoires single women use to talk about singleness, polarised as two negative and
denigrating and two positive and idealised conceptions of singleness. The repertoires
used in combination are singleness as personal deficit, as social exclusion, as
independence and choice, as self-actualization, and achievement forming an
“uncomfortable discursive climate” for single women. The opposing repertoires represent
39
“a discursive package creating a powerful set of ideological dilemmas without easy
resolution” and which have consequences for single women’s identity work. xxiv If one
represents singleness as a positive and desirable state, how does one talk about stepping
outside the category? Women who denigrate singleness reveal themselves as personally
deficient and failing to leave the category. How do women manage the discursive space
marked by the four repertoires? One positive strategy identified by Reynolds and
Wetherall is that women are aware of, and talked about, the dilemmas. In interview data
the tendency among some women to “develop a reflexive account and talk about the
dilemmas per se rather than alternating between each side of them as experiential truths”
is discerned.xxv
Utilizing this framework, I ask how is singleness spoken about in Ireland, to what
extent is an “uncomfortable discursive climate” evident in narrative accounts of single
women and how do women position themselves in relation to dominant constructions of
womanhood and singlehood?
Interpretative Repertoires: Irish Study
Women are discouraged from talking about the experiences and meaning of
singleness. Silenced by the taken-for-granted backdrop of familism, women do not speak
about their singleness with friends, family, or in the public domain. It is acceptable for
people with partners and families to talk freely about the ups and downs of family life,
sexual relationships, childbearing, and rearing in both private and public settings. In
contrast, for single women, the discursive context is primarily evoked by others who call
on women to account for their single status, who tease, insult or make hurtful remarks
40
about or to single women or who completely ignore any reference to women’s
singleness.”xxvi Neither do women speak with close friends about being single.
I would want to be at a really low ebb, just to really bare my soul to
them. . . I would have to be at a very low ebb to actually speak, to let
people know even the way I am. I am inclined to keep to myself and to
keep it inside. . . people wouldn’t know how I felt, the real me. . .
Interview with Caít, age 39, Ireland.
The research interview is one of the few occasions when women speak about
being single. Silencing of singleness talk limits the opportunity for women to explore the
narratives in public and private use. For example, women struggle with the conflict
between woman identity as defined by ideologies and practices of familism and single
identity based on experiential knowledge of the individual benefits and challenges of
singleness. Kitty, who is unhappy about the lack of an intimate relationship in her life,
but yet yearns to “have my own identity,” speaks of the tension between autonomous
single identity and woman identity as being intimately connected with others.
I would like to be somebody’s” wife and somebody’s mother, but I would
also like to be me. With my own life and my own career . . . to have my
own identity. But to have somebody to share it with. . . Interview with
Kitty, age 31, Ireland.
Most of the women interviewed think of themselves as single: it is a conscious,
present characteristic that not only shapes others’ interactions with them, but is part of
their knowledge about themselves. Women are attuned to the lack of fit between the
rigidity of the social category of singleness and their own personal experience of living as
41
a single woman. Women’s narratives reveal this tension and their struggle around their
capacity to alter their subject position so that a positive, coherent identity can be
achieved. While many women think of themselves as single, they immediately modify
their response, reluctant to foreclose on future possibilities. Women speak about waiting
for “the right person” or the desire to have a child that could alter their single identity.
I do now, but I didn’t. That is not to say that I don’t want to get married, if
I met the right person. But I am quite happy to be single if that is what
falls to me. Interview with Kelly, age 36, Ireland.
And even if these possibilities fail to transpire, women reveal that they have
sufficient “confidence” to be single and are “happy” to be single.
Negative Repertoires: Singleness as an Unacceptable Social Identity
The women interviewed use negative and positive repertoires in different
combinations. Nevertheless the negative repertoire is more commonly used by less
successful singles and those who reluctantly accept their singleness. For these women,
singleness as a deviant social identity, intrudes into their perception of singleness. A
negative repertoire is evident in the characterisation of singleness as deficient personal
attributes and women themselves are to blame for being single. For example, women
speak about the types of single women with whom they did not wish to be associated.
Labels they found objectionable and insulting when applied by others to themselves, they
uncritically apply to other single women. This in contrast to Cynthia Burnley’s findings
in which the single women she interviewed are loathe to describe other single women in
negative terms, (apart that is from those searching for a partner and who participated in
42
“single activities”).xxvii Burnley’s women are sensitive about the negative portrayal of
single women suggested by terms such as “loser,” “swinger,” “never married,”
“unmarried,” “old maid,” “spinster,” and are also aware that strangers and acquaintances
would use such labels about single women such as them. In contrast, the women I
interviewed had little difficulty in applying negative terms to single women from whom
they wish to distance themselves.
You would get one or two spinsters coming in and they were very, very
particular, because they were so used to having everything their own way.
I would hate to end up like that, maybe I will, but well. . . in time gone by,
they would be pernickety, or they would be looking for attention.
Interview with Fiona, age 34, Ireland.
In not wanting to be single, Kitty has difficulty accepting other single women.
She describes herself as “a watcher of other women.”
I personally don’t accept myself as being a single woman, so then I
wouldn’t really accept other single women. I am tired of people watching
me and wondering if I am going to get married and I would be as much a
watcher of other women and wondering if they were going to meet
someone or going to get married. No I don’t think it (being single) is a
viable alternative to being married. I think a few women who choose to be
that way, who have absolutely no interest in meeting someone, just being
quite happy just being themselves. For them, yes it is viable, but for those
who don’t choose it, it is not. Interview with Kitty, age 31, Ireland.
43
Some women distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable singles.
Acceptable singles are those who, like themselves, might marry someday while
unacceptable singles are “fussy, selfish, choosy, particular, spinsters, women who are
staid, old, not living, single women who hate men, old maids, wallflowers, lonely women
who are left on the shelf and women who have something wrong with them.” “Though I
am one of them,” Susan distanced herself from other single people who are “oddballs,”
had “odd mannerisms” and are “very pernickety.” Single women also distinguish
between singles with and without intimate partners. For some women, those with partners
are not “true” singles, having the privileges and futures of being coupled. Partnered
singles are construed as strong, choosing singleness and intimacy but in “having the best
of both worlds” they too are marked as unacceptable and revealingly not authentic single
people.
Some people like being single and have. . . a lot of outside interests and
they are very strong people and they were determined to be single anyway.
Now they may have boyfriends and not live with them. That means they
wouldn’t be single in the true sense. They wouldn’t be single. Interview
with Fionnuala, age 44, Ireland.
Those for whom singleness is difficult are unable to recognise the successful
movement away from a negative identity or the negotiation between independence and
intimacy that partnered singleness achieves. Bounded by singleness as an unacceptable
social identity, the potential of alternative identity accounts is not noticed.
Singleness as Lack
44
For most women, singleness as a social category is defined as “not married,” “not
in a relationship,” and “as not chosen.” For some, this meant that to be single is “being
alone” and “lonely.”
Spinster, on the shelf, not going to get married. It is a lonely life really. . . .
Being lonely. . . Interview with Edel, age 43, Ireland.
For Mel, womanhood is based on a “natural” imperative to reproduce. She
explains her failure to marry as a personal deficiency that she is lacking in some capacity
or attribute. Singleness means
I am different. What is wrong with me that I cannot get married? Looked
down on. Women should get married. Women should have children. It is
so natural to do so. Interview with Mel, age 44, Ireland.
Similarly, Fiona is provoked to think about her gender identity and regards
singleness as somewhat “selfish,” particularly for women. She finds it difficult to
reconcile her single identity with her identity as a woman. Womanhood is selfless, it
means “giving” and “sharing” to family and children: any other conception of
womanhood is “selfish.” Perceiving oneself as selfish causes doubt about one’s
womanhood.
Being a woman, it was nearly selfish. That I should maybe think of
sharing something with somebody else and maybe should be giving time
to family and children. Interview with Fiona, age 34, Ireland.
Stereotypical and negative, self deprecating representations of singleness are
found in women’s narratives, similar to those in the British study. Even when women
45
attempt to challenge negative conceptions, there is recognition of their tenacity and the
need to find a way of speaking and thinking differently about singleness.
I suppose, what I would love would be if being single was OK. If society
would allow people to be single and I suppose that I could argue that must
come from in here first and I probably have a conditioning that makes it
difficult even for me to allow single to be OK. So I can’t accept it
myself. . . Interview with Cara, age 39, Ireland.
Singleness as Loss and Exclusion
Singleness is construed as loss and being excluded from society in women’s talk
of missing being with others, missing intimacy, and missing motherhood and children.
Because being single is most commonly thought about as not coupled, absence of a
partner is one of the most talked about aspects of singleness among single women
themselves. In having to account for being unattached, the single woman has to engage in
reflection about whom she is in order to present herself to others.
I don’t have much of a social outlet because of the fact that I am single.
And I think once you reach a certain age, it is a couples world after that. . .
you are fairly isolated because of that. Interview with Fionnuala, age 44,
Ireland.
The narratives contain many personal experiences of being excluded from
coupled occasions and social gatherings by family and friends, by colleagues in work
settings precisely because they are women alone.xxviii
Feeling lonely and isolated is mentioned as the main drawback to being alone:
most women speak about lonely times, even those who say they lead full and satisfying
46
lives. Who identify single women and who plan to be alone. For example, the
companionship of others cannot be taken for granted by single women. Susan finds that
she has to look for companionship all of the time, something she assumes she would not
have to do if she had a partner or husband. After her mother died, Fionnuala stopped
going out to social occasions or night classes and dreads the winter most. She misses the
companionship of her mother, somebody to come home to at the end of a working day
and someone with whom to share events, both remarkable and unremarkable. Though she
works fulltime and lives in a large urban area she feels lonely and isolated, something she
could not have anticipated. No longer a caretaker, she feels she had no personal identity,
no sense of who she is.
It is something that I didn’t imagine going to feel like this for the rest of
my life. As you get older I suppose that you realise that you don’t have
any family. . . somebody who would think about you and appreciate your
worth and needs for the rest of my life. . . . you realize that you are not
part of family anymore and that the family who are your siblings have
gone on to make families of their own. . . you don’t really have an
identity. Interview with Fionnuala, age 44, Ireland.
In not having an intimate, sexual partner women say they miss the companionship
of another adult with whom they could share and talk about daily, routine, mundane
activities. Cara not only misses somebody to socialise with, but also having somebody
with whom to talk things through.
[I miss] not having somebody to do things with. . . I wouldn’t go to the
pictures on my own. . . [I miss] somebody to go on in my everyday life
47
with. If I am having problems at work, figuring out something or
somebody, it is great to talk to somebody. It helps you figure it out in your
mind. I miss that. Interview with Cara, age 39, Ireland.
But in women’s talk about their feelings of missing the companionship of other
adults, feelings of missing one to one intimacy, feelings of regret about not having
children, feelings of the loss of attaining woman identity as traditionally defined are also
revealed. Physical contact and sexual intimacy are also missed. Many women speak at
length and freely about singleness as absence of intimacy, as absence of sexual
relationship, reflecting on their sexuality. Apart from therapists, there is no opportunity to
explore feelings about sexuality.
I am trying to get the words right for this. I know exactly what I miss
most. I think there is something special between a couple, a husband and
wife, partners. . . . That there is a bond or a contract, an unwritten contract
between two people. You always have somebody, well hopefully anyway,
somebody to talk to, somebody to come home to, somebody to share
things with, hide things from. That you have somebody constant in your
life. . . . At the end of the day you have somebody to climb into bed with
and put your arms around... And yes there are nights when I would go to
bed feeling so lonely and would love to be held by somebody. And that is
something I would miss the most. Having somebody special in my life.
Somebody that I am special to and that are special to me. Just having this
person to be there with me. Interview with Bridget, age 32, Ireland.
Another woman specifically misses having sex with somebody.
48
I suppose I would very much like to have a physical relationship. . . I think
I will have to take practical steps. . . . It would be a dreadful thought to
think that for the rest of my life I wouldn’t have a physical relationship
with somebody. . . I am sexually frustrated. . . I suppose I miss the actual
physical act itself, the actual physical sensations and the closeness. The
ability to get close to somebody very quickly. Interview with Cliona, age
37, Ireland.
Though most women are quite definite that they would never consider having a
child alone, others are more ambivalent, unwilling to firmly reject the option. Most miss
having the opportunity to have children.
I have gone past, I can’t have children now. And my child bearing age
from thirty onwards, were taken up taking care of my parents that I
suppose that I lost out on those years. . . I adore children. It is the only
thing that I regret. I wouldn’t care if I never had a man as long as I had
kids. Interview with Fionnuala, age 44, Ireland.
A number are unwilling to wait for Mr. Right and would consider parenting a
child alone.
I would, I would like it actually. It wouldn’t be my upbringing and it
wouldn’t be my family’s way at all, but in another couple of years, if I
have not got a long term relationship going, I wouldn’t hang on. I would
have a child. . . I would just say that I would like to have a child. I
wouldn’t like to go through life without having a child. Interview with
Brenda, age 31, Ireland.
49
Women know how they feel, have thought about their vulnerabilities in
independence and have thought about “the practical steps” that they need to take, to live
as single women.
Family and Negative Conceptions of Singleness
Often it is attributes of the single woman herself that are the focus of attention.
Family and friends often charge that the single woman is “too fussy, too choosy, too
particular.”
A lot of them would say that I am too fussy, all the time I have been told
that I am fussy, but not only my family, friends and that. . . Interview with
Brenda, age 31, Ireland.
Fussiness is regarded as a regrettable personal characteristic closely associated
with and used an as explanation for the single status. Interestingly, most women accept
the label, not openly challenging the interpretation of themselves as a person who is too
choosy, too particular in their search for a partner. The pejorative label of “too fussy” is a
judgement, critical of the single status, questioning single women’s apparent failure to
support the majority form of female social identity, as the married, childbearing,
heterosexual woman. The alternative interpretation of woman as chooser is little heard.
Many women mention that because they are single, family members and mothers
in particular regard them as incomplete adults, as “girl like.” The deprivation of full
adult status or personhood is a recurrent theme.
My mother gives me an awful hard time and my eldest sister gives me an
awful hard time over being single. And I always have a feeling from both
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of them and probably from other folk as well that I am not complete when
I am not married. Interview with Emer, age 33, Ireland.
Bridget is not only confused about her single identity but also about “who I really
am,” about her identity as a woman.
I don’t feel like I am a girl anymore. I don’t feel I am a girl. But on the
other hand, there is this very strong message telling me that I am and that I
am not having relevant experiences which would show otherwise.
Interview with Bridget, age 32, Ireland.
The single woman perceives that she is less important than married family
members. Katie, caring and living with her elderly mother recounts that her sister has a
big family and runs a successful business with her husband. Accordingly their mother
treats her sister with more affection.
She is the daughter that is doted on and I am the maid. Again my mother
has more respect for the one that is married. . . I definitely feel that it is
because my sister is married to a successful man and that. . . . They don’t
give me much heed at all. I think a lot of that is because I am single and
they don’t take much notice of you. You are not worth as much, with my
family anyway. Interview with Katie, age 45, Ireland.
Despite her caring work, Katie feels she is not “worth as much” because she is not
married. Her sisters and brothers pay her very little attention, not inviting her opinion or
inquiring after her health and well-being or any other needs that she may have. Narratives
reveal that single women are placed in a subordinate relation to families and heterosexual
couples: the interests of those who realise familistic, societal norms supercede the
51
interests of single women. Being treated by families as less than adult, as immature, as
not deserving attention, support or care is a consequence of their devalued status.
Positive Repertoires: Independence and Being in Control
While the trials of managing alone form part of the negative repertoire of
singleness, this same aspect is valorised in women’s narratives when speaking about
independence and freedom of choice as the main benefit and privilege of being single.
The positive repertoires revolve around being independent and having freedom of choice.
Perception of self as strong and self reliant, being mobile, achieving career or educational
goals, valuing time to oneself, being engaged in creative and self development activities
are given as positive examples of being single. Women’s shared commitment to
independence emerged as the most significant aspect of their singleness. Components of
independence identified in Tuula Gordon’s study were financial independence, taking
care of yourself, being in control, emotional independence, mental independence and
being alone.xxix For her participants, establishing independence was hard work, had to be
learned over time and then sustained through developing “symmetrical relationships”
with others. Attachment to independence as the most valued characteristic of being
single, is marked in the narrative accounts. The word “independent” is most commonly
used to describe themselves or other single women they know. Independence, singleness
and the desire for autonomy are intertwined in women’s view of themselves. Colette
points to her single lifestyle which supports her “want for independence.”
I don’t have a problem with being single. I think I have an awful lot of
advantages with being single. It supports my want for independence.
Interview with Colette, age 37, Ireland.
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For Katie, singleness, independence and individuality are equated. Katie’s view of
herself is as a single person, who is “very independent.” Despite the positive accent on
independence, Katie continues to construe singleness as not coupled.
Oh yes, I am conscious of it [being single]. Being single or being an
individual and not part of a couple, I would see myself that way. I would
see myself very much as an individual and not part of a couple and I like
to be very independent, but it is not always possible. Interview with Katie,
age 45, Ireland.
A number of women either describe themselves as “strong” people or that one has
to be “strong” to be independent:
I think you would need to be strong because I mean, I feel that in lots of
women there is a huge sense of dependency on a man, or on a partner. . . .
You know I think oftentimes it is a sense of vulnerability in women and
they just need to latch onto somebody. . . Interview with Collete, age 37,
Ireland.
I suppose I am a strong person. . . I only rely on myself. I am very
independent and I don”t make a decision based on what someone else may
do for me. . . I do it myself. Interview with Eleanor, age 32, Ireland.
Having the confidence to be independent and having the confidence to stay single
is a recurrent theme. Some women recognise that they have gained the confidence to go
on living the single life, even in times of adversity. Bridget described being single as
having to deal with “the opposite all the time:” she has to constantly deal with her own
and others conceptions of woman as coupled and mother. It is an effort to construct a
53
positive single identity in this context, but an effort that is important to make. Attachment
to independence partially explains the viability of a single identity and the single lifestyle.
In the context of independence, being without relationship ties is construed as a
benefit of the single life. Being in charge of oneself, having developed the capacity for
self reliance, having time to oneself, being a self governing individual are aspects of
independence which are valued and to which women are attached. Much emphasis is
placed on being able to support oneself financially. Women gain confidence from their
success at providing for themselves, content that they could buy their own home, car or
holiday abroad, for example. Being independent clarifies a way of being in the world,
imbuing a strong positive hue to single identity. Siobhan describes independence as being
“complete,” a very different conception of singleness as lack, as incomplete.
To be independent. . . . it means being able to stand on your own, not
feeling that you are lacking in anything. That you are complete and able to
stand on your own, even through strengths and weaknesses and ups and
downs. . . I attach some kind of...importance to being on my own and able
to stand up and able to manage and get things done, on my own. Interview
with Siobhan, age 37, Ireland.
Satisfaction with Living Alone
Living alone is perceived as an important aspect of independence. Almost half of
the women live alone. Living alone also means that one has to be financially independent,
self-reliant and emotionally self-sufficient. For some living alone is an “unexpected
pleasure.” Cara, anxious about people breaking in and strange noises at night found that
her worries gradually ceased:
54
After a while, then it just stopped and I don’t know how or why, but it did
. . . and I just thought, I love it and I just love living on my own and it was
one of the joys that I hadn’t anticipated and it is something that has given
me more pleasure than anything that I can remember for a long time.
Interview with Cara, age 39, Ireland.
Many of the women talk about how important it is to live by one self, taking
pleasure in one’s own space, to be as one chooses to be. In a study of a “family oriented”
society in the Netherlands, Jenny De Jong-Gierveld and Monique Alberts conclude that
the unmarried, divorced and widowed are lonelier than married people.xxx However, a
sub-group of unmarried and divorced people living alone, identified as “creative singles,”
report fewer feelings of loneliness. Of these, women compared to men, tend to value
living alone in positive terms. De Jong-Gierveld and Alberts conjecture that women’s
capacity for self-sufficiency is greater, perhaps because they possess more internal
resources. An orientation to values and practices based on independence is perhaps part
of that explanation. Though those who enjoy living alone in the Irish research feel lonely
“at times,” but few would consider giving up living by themselves. Even when financial
benefits of sharing would ease the burden of debt, the pleasure of living alone won out.
Deciding to live alone is also a statement to oneself, recognizing a conception of self as
“preferring” to be live alone, as “needing” to live by oneself. Recognizing one’s
preferences and acting upon them, in this instance, living alone, is part of the process of
composing an autonomous, single identity.
Being in Control: Refusing Sexual Relationships
55
Accounts of women’s involvement in career and educational development reveal
their commitment to nurturing independence and self-development as a priority in their
lives. Being in control is crucial to these women. Women defer marital or reproductive
decisions, being more interested in creating options for themselves that ensured a degree
of personal independence not available to their mothers. A concern with personal growth,
challenging oneself and having confidence in one’s own judgements permeates women’s
accounts of their working lives, business activities and educational plans. Brenda
describes how she “discovered herself” through being ambitious and testing herself in her
career. In her view, she is no longer “shy and reserved” but “confident and ambitious.”
Fiona, who started her own business on leaving school, and owned her own house and car
by the time she was twenty-one, found it difficult to reconcile her enthusiasm for and
success in entrepreneurial activity with her sense of herself as a woman. For her, women
had a social obligation to unselfishly “give time to family and children” but she wanted to
make a commitment to developing and expanding her own business. Doubts about her
femininity and capability assailed her. Her account of the resolution is interesting.
It dawned on me. Deal with yourself and your person and what you are
happy with and you go with it. . . Interview with Fiona, age 34, Ireland.
Fiona realized that she was feeling constrained by social expectations of what it is
to be a woman and “once that was out of the way” she proceeded to become fully
engaged in her business development plans. She had to reflect on herself as a person, on
what kind of person she thought herself to be so that she could set aside conventional
expectations and fulfil her career ambition.
56
Most of the older, single women in this study are no longer sexually active with
another person, some for ten years or more, while a few have never been sexually active
with another person. Cliona observes that she is less dependent, less needy when not
sexually involved with another.
You are free of wanting another person. Of being a little bit, how would
you say it, dependent. Dependency isn’t there because there is no need for
a person and there is a certain dependency when you need the person. . .
there is a freedom, a little bit of freedom. . . Interview with Cliona, age 37,
Ireland.
Wanting to be a person in “my own right” was another important aspect of
independence. If intimate relationships did not allow women to be themselves, women
“withdrew,” avoiding relationships which would constrain or confine their sense of
themselves. Fiona regards relationships with men as inhibiting her self-development.
I suppose in relationships with men, I felt that he’d be keeping you back in
some shape or form. . . I don’t like any form of coercion. Interview with
Fiona, age 34, Ireland.
Others talk about previous relationships they severed because they were not
recognised as persons in their own right. Unhappy being perceived as somebody’s
girlfriend, “I was. . . a non-identity. . . . I want to be a person in my own right, not
somebody else’s appendage.” Her boyfriend paid little attention to her career ambitions
and made decisions about their life together without consulting her.
I actually ended the relationship and I remember at the time that friends of
ours were absolutely stunned. . . . But I just realised that he really didn’t
57
love me and the other thing was that he actually didn’t take my studies
very seriously. . . Interview with Anna, age 42, Ireland.
The evidence from this study is that women significantly value their
independence: that it is meaningful to the daily practice of single living. Women who
value independence are emphasising autonomy as a key goal around which they are
organising their lives. This fundamentally structures their relationships with others and
consequently their personal identities. Church emphasises reflection, planning and selfcontrol as constitutive of self-identity. Valuing independence has also implications for
female gender-identity, setting up a “new specification” of what it is to be a woman.xxxi
If one accepts Gilligan’s proposition that women have a different moral orientation than
men, (towards caring and relationship) and that this “sets it own distinctive
developmental path,” then achieving woman identity based on single values will be
problematic for single women.xxxii For women, autonomy, rather than attachment, is
portrayed by Gilligan as “the illusory and dangerous quest.” In living independently, in
saying “I am an independent woman,” single women are claiming an autonomous
selfhood in the context of their relational, gendered identities as women. Autonomy and
relationality are clearly identity issues with which single women have to struggle and
resolve.
Impossible Utterances and Actions
Reynolds and Wetherall, “suspect that it may be unusual to have to draw on a
discursive and ideological space that is so polarised, where the ideological dilemmas
raised by the contradictions between the repertoires are so closely linked to the
possibilities for who one can be as a person.” While other marginalized or excluded
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groups in society generally have the support of a social movement and lobby groups to
counteract any stigma, single women “lack a social movement or identity politics around
singleness.” This is indeed problematic and a phenomenon recognised by a number of
scholars of singleness studies who advocate a politics of change around singleness, a
project perhaps of interest to feminism.xxxiii Reynolds and Wetherall noted discursive
strategies open to women negotiating their membership of the “troubled category” of
singleness. They included distancing oneself from the category or defining the category
through positive conceptions of singleness. Very few women in the British study chose
the latter option, the denigrating conceptions of singleness being in command. However,
women made it clear in their accounts that they are not personally deficient, and resisted
this construction of singleness. Women demonstrated distancing, explaining why they are
not true members of the category – they either had a boyfriend, lots of friends, a good
social life, would like to have married, are financially independent, and are really
different from women who are “spinsters.” Distancing is the most common strategy
utilized; the primary task is to disavow membership of the troubled category, in the effort
to communicate “a more positive sense of self” to others.xxxiv
In the Irish study, distancing is utilized but to lesser extent. Usually women accept
their single designation and are likely to blame themselves for being single due to some
inherent personal deficiency or inability to maintain long-term relationships. For
example, some women say they do not know how to be sexually close to another person.
Others cite adverse family background, such as parental alcoholism or having witnessed
or having been the victims of violence in the home. Illness, being separated from parents
at an early age or having to assume caring responsibilities early on in life are also part of
59
biographical history presented to explain personal inability to form long term couple like
relationships with another. Others speak about having no control over their lives, fate
rather than self-controlling destiny. For these, singleness then is “something that just
happens.”xxxv A consequence of polarised repertoires on singleness, is a difficulty in
saying, “I choose to be single.” Choosing to be single is an impossible utterance in the
context of denigrating or idealised repertoires of singleness. More commonly, women
clarify at length that they did not choose to be single. Singleness is regarded as a
challenge that can be embraced by some but is beyond the ability of others. A passive,
fatalistic account of singleness stands in marked contrast to actively choosing to be
single.
Combining independence and intimacy is also a challenge for women. Bridget
feels confused by her single identity in that she wants to be “independent” and “I can
direct my own life but I would like to have somebody else in there as well.” Bridget
wants to be in control over her own life, but also wants human connection in an intimate,
sexual relationship. The polarized repertoires of singleness make it very difficult for
women to be positively single and yet admit to a desire for an intimate relationship. Some
women resolve the “intimacy problem” in creative and individual ways, some of which
challenge conventional expectations of female behaviour. Alternatives to marriage for
post-thirty single women include non-resident, intimate relationships.
I think a lot of women. . . choose to live singly. . . I know [two] women
having relationships with men for maybe six years. . . they each have their
own apartment and their male partners have their apartment and they just
go back and forward. . . and if you ask them are they single, they say
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"Yes.” And that is the way they choose to live their life. I think a lot more
women are choosing to do that. Interview with Nancy, age 36, Ireland.
For the six women with partners the presence of an intimate relationship did not
change their view of themselves as single women. Being in an intimate relationship
brings many personal benefits, but does not compromise independent single lifestyle or
self-identity.
Marriage isn’t an option because he already has been married and has a
family and it is just not an option. Even if it were from his point of view, I
don’t think it is something I would fancy. We go out together socially, we
get on very well, we have quite a bit in common, but there is a lot of him I
couldn’t live with. . . I am quite happy the way I am. It would be a huge,
huge commitment for me to make now, because there are a lot of things I
would have to give up. I have based my life around what I am, what I do
and I have tremendous flexibility and I think that would be very hard for a
man to take on board. Interview with Collete, age 37, Ireland.
Marriage would interfere with Colette’s career plans and the mobility and
flexibility that she enjoys. For her there is neither an economic, social or sexual reason to
marry. Social and economic changes in Irish society mean that “it is very easy to
establish your own base and live quite comfortably without a partner.” Colette had
recently built her own home described herself as “single through choice” and would not
give up her single way of life. Being single supports her “want for independence” and
gives her “a sense of freedom” while the non-marital committed sexual relationship
fulfils her need for intimacy.
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Talking About the Dilemmas of Being Single
A number of women use therapy to talk through and resolve some of the
dilemmas of singleness. In therapy women’s concerns focus first on transforming their
own attitude to singleness, then to “making singleness OK” in society. In psychotherapy,
Kitty is learning to deal with her anger and other people’s view of her as “written off”
because she is not married.
In doing the work that I do in psychotherapy, I am dealing with those
issues quite a lot. So I would hope that in working with those issues that I
would be more able to accept it (being single) and live with it and enjoy it
even. To try and turn it round for myself. Interview with Kitty, age 31,
Ireland.
Bridget is angry at others’ lack of respect for women who are not coupled, a
situation she finds both undermining of women’s choices and single women’s claims for
recognition. Bridget is concerned not only with her own struggles and dilemmas, but also
those of all women whose identity claims and alternative “ways of life” are denied.
So I suppose I am actually angry with that. I feel it is a very ignorant
stance to take, very disrespectful and I feel that it is very undermining as
well. . . I see a lot more women who have chosen not to be or maybe not
so much as chosen, but are not in relationships and it is very much a way
of life and it is a way of life that is undermined. . . many women, including
myself, may always live in it. So it is a kind of denial, I suppose, of who
we are and how we are living our lives and the value of our lives as seen
by others. Interview with Bridget, age 32, Ireland.
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Singleness as an Acceptable Social Identity
Part of the feminist theoretical debate on conceptions of womanhood has moved
between essentialist/universalist definitions of woman and post-structuralist arguments
that find analysis of discursive practices on identity is more useful.xxxvi Much of this
theorising is an effort to deal with women’s agency. What set of factors or conditions
motivate one person to embrace change and resist constraints while another continues to
participate in her own oppression, so to speak?
How do we account for the fact that even when confronted with alternative
perspectives, some women choose to become liberated or at least to resist patriarchy
while others do not? How do we explain why, even when shown the face of their
oppression, some women still justify their oppressors?xxxvii
The development of skills and competencies assist identity transformation.xxxviii
Meyers identifies socialisation for autonomy competency as key to releasing agency and
achieving full personhood for women. Certainly socialisation, consciousness-raising, the
development of competencies as well as contact with ideas and alternative ideologies go
some distance in theorising individual identity transformation. Structural elements such
as the availability of material resources and the enhancement of legal rights for example,
are without doubt crucial pre-requisites to realising individual autonomy and selfdetermination. This is most evident when a bar or impediment exists, such as in the case
of the Irish marriage bar of 1932 to 1973 which formally and legally excluded married
women from public service and financial services. The marriage bar limited women’s
employment opportunities and depressed women’s bid for economic independence.
Inequalities imposed by class, race, sexual orientation, physical and mental ability as well
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as gender, for example, all impact on the person we claim to be and on individual
identity. I am not arguing here that such structural constraints or opportunities are
ignored, but rather that these are combined with a focus on individual capacity for change
and the consequences for social transformation. Huntingdon advises that feminists need
to theorize “the activity whereby we assume responsibility for who we become and for
cultivating critical consciousness, even as our desires and intentions remain socially
influenced and even though we liberate ourselves via the range of critical discourses
already available.xxxix
For Huntingdon, the concept of self-determination combines the freedom of selfconstitution with the constraint of social construction, that is “the subject whose identity.
. . is rooted in the self-critical choices she makes.” Self-reflection and self-awareness
develops one’s capacity to make self-critical choices. These choices inform one’s
activities and one’s relationships which “produce new habits and capacities” and
engender autonomy.xl Thus the capacity for being oneself, for composing oneself comes
into being.
The response to singleness among single women in this study is varied. Yet all
reflect on their own identity, a concern motivated by single women’s deviant social
identity in a heterosexual, familistic society. The effects of stigmatising interactions with
others precipitates intense awareness that one’s own identity claims as an acceptable
single women are not validated, a pattern which women commonly observe in their
interactions with others. This awareness, this self-reflection in interactions while they are
going on, compels women to reinterpret the significance of dominant social identities and
find “acceptable” ways of being single women for themselves. In the face of others”
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view of them as not-women, as not-adult, women compose their own definitions of self
which do not rely on their conceptions of woman as wife, as mother, as coupled in sexual
intimacy or as economically dependent within a familial setting; the result is a developing
conception of woman as an autonomous, self-defined person. In actively transforming
their own identity, in deferring to one’s own values, in making distinctive relationship
choices, in contesting and resisting patriarchal constructions of womanhood, single
women demonstrate their impressive capacity for innovatory action.
What did women have to say about the future viability of singleness as an
acceptable social identity? Four responses to the dominant constructions of womanhood
and singlehood are noted; compliance, acceptance, resistance and transformation. For
five of the thirty women, the lack of sexual intimacy in their lives defined their single
identity as failure, despite impressive personal achievements in other spheres and
awareness of the advantages of the single lifestyle. Significantly influenced by
heterosexual familistic ideology, their perception of singleness as different and
marginalized leads to a sense of personal failure in achieving womanhood. Caught in the
repertoire of single woman as failure limits their capacity for innovative or
transformatory action. None are interested in promoting singleness as a basis for
continuing self-identity or indeed for social identity. They seek to exchange the
stigmatised social identity of singleness for the more valued social identity of marriage.
In complying with the dominant conceptions of womanhood, they seek change only for
themselves.
In contrast, though there are differences of degree among them, twenty-five
women agree that singleness “ought” be an alternative social identity for women. Of
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these, some single women are characterised by their pragmatic or realistic view of the
world. While very attached to the single lifestyle, accept own single self-identity, they
agree that dominant social identities for women continue to prevail and they also agree
with and accept this conception of womanhood. Single stigma continues to have
resonance and resolving tensions concerning woman identity and single identity is not
easy. Though Eleanor finds being single difficult and lonely, she is keenly aware of the
benefits of independence, accepts the fact of her singlehood and would be very reluctant
to exchange her singleness now for a relationship or marriage. Singleness is an alternative
identity location for women in her view, as it is a reality, representing her life and the
lives of all her friends.
Oh Yes. It has to be because it is there. There is no what will I do? Will I
get married? There is none of that. Myself and my peers, we are all too
intelligent to go for the "I want to get married and he’ll do.” None of us
are going to go for that. I think if I waited this long and things haven’t
worked out, so what? I would definitely be on my own than lonely in a
marriage. Interview with Eleanor, age 32, Ireland.
For Kelly the single identity is “absolutely” a viable alternative to a married
identity, one of a range of alternatives that are being considered by women in
contemporary Ireland.
I feel myself luckier than a lot, I see myself as a lot luckier than a lot of
women I know and even a lot of women that I don’t know. . .Yes, I think
there are all sorts of alternatives to marriage. Interview with Kelly, age 36,
Ireland.
66
Women are aware of the difficulties of claiming singleness as an acceptable social
identity. In order for changes in social identities to be accepted, it is not enough to claim
that the identity ought to be acceptable but the larger community of others must also
agree to the changes. Brenda believes that “things are changing in a lot of ways in
Ireland” citing the introduction of divorce and the growing economic independence of
women. She has learned much from observing her mother’s life, a life spent at home
looking after twelve children, not able to drive a car, not involved in activities outside the
home and crucially having no money of her own. It was a life that Brenda was
determined not to live.
She had twelve children and I have felt that she shouldn’t have had twelve
children. She should have been a career lady. And I can see the mistakes
now. . . I could see her having had a better life. Interview with Brenda, age
31, Ireland.
Brenda, despite the changing cultural and economic environment, believes that
marriage and motherhood cannot be combined with achieving economic independence
for women or with the risks, resources and time required for entrepreneurial activity.
While this situation continues to prevail, the single identity “is an alternative in a way but
[also] it is not.” Brenda is happy to live her life as an independent single woman with an
established career, who can take financial risks and experiment with her life plans.
However the problematic issue of composing an acceptable female identity as a single
woman remains to be resolved in the future. Katie believes that single women have the
opportunity now to make independent personal and lifestyle choices but it is also evident
67
from her account that the legitimacy of singleness as a social identity has not yet been
secured.
They used to be viewed as kinds of losers. I think that has probably
changed now. It is easier to be single now and people can choose to be
single and still to be financially afloat. But I think that they also see single
women that remain single, especially women, they see them as very hardnosed and very well off and very self-centred. A lot of people would think
that single professional women are too selfish and too self-centred to get
married. And I would say that a lot of people would not like this view that
women can choose to get married or not. Women can choose to live with
somebody and get married or not. Women can choose to have a family or
not. They can make all these decisions now and still keep going. Interview
with Katie, age 45, Ireland.
Bridget believes that it is easier to be a single woman now than it was twenty
years ago and that perceptions of single women have changed from being viewed as
“spinsters” and “minders,” to also include gay women, career women and women who
postpone motherhood. She is aware that the acceptability of singleness is dependent on
one’s class position. Her class position has conferred benefits and opportunities which
allow her to be economically independent, self sufficient and to remain single if she so
chooses.
I suppose I am quite privileged. . . I did get to college and that I have a job
that allows me access to clothes, to holidays, to therapy. So I am
privileged to have access to a way of life that is maybe more free and I am
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not sure that it is like that for all women. . . Interview with Bridget, age
32, Ireland.
She believes that her life is quite different from the life of many economically
poorer women, who believe that financial and social security is found in marriage.
Being in a relationship was your means of security and still is for a lot of
women and is sought after. And you get dolled up to the nines and you go
out and you go out there to “catch.” That is the way it is and. . . while I
say it is a lot easier (to be single), I think that maybe those women feel
that they should be in a relationship in order to complete themselves is
quite prevalent. I don’t think that is gone. Interview with Bridget, age 32,
Ireland.
The “new” single identity is womanhood as independent and self-reliant, as
exercizing the capacity to choose and to determine one’s own life path. Single women
make unconventional choices and “still keep going.” Siobhan believes that she alone is
responsible for her own life and her own happiness, believes that she is in charge of her
own future, to be organized according to what she values most. Her involvement in
community and voluntary activities is connected to the sense that she alone is
accountable for her own self-development, happiness and security.
I like to get involved in things for itself and I think I often feel excluded if
I don’t involve myself in things. Secondly I think it is something of taking
on responsibility for furthering the things in your life or your environment
that you think are important. Just on its own as something you should do
and is worthwhile doing. Interview with Siobhan, age 37, Ireland.
69
While, singleness means that “you haven’t the voice in political terms and being
represented and. . . being single is less than best” Mari advocates collective based change.
Committed to making singleness a more acceptable social identity one has to remain “on
the outside” she argues, a place requiring strength and support from others. She and other
single women are “at the beginning of a frontier in a way and that we are trying to stand
up and be counted as being single.” She is concerned that singleness be made visible and
embraced as a legitimate alternative to marriage for women.
A focus on the narratives of single women reveals critical resistance to the effects
of stigmatising categorisations underpinned by familist ideologies. Transformative
identities are achieved through self-understanding and awareness of the contradictions
imposed by narrow conceptions of womanhood and singlehood. The capacity for making
autonomous choices in relationships with others, in chosen activities based on one’s own
values and in devising a number of innovatory and nonconformist resolutions to
combining intimacy with independence are also significant. Taking one’s own
responsibility for transformatory action and living as a single woman brings the
possibility of singleness as an acceptable identity ever closer.
70
Notes
i
Jill Reynolds and Margaret Wetherell, “The Discursive Climate of Singleness: The
Consequences for Women’s Negotiation of A Single Identity,” Feminism and
Psychology 13 no. 4, (2003): 489-510.
ii
Michèle Barrett and Mary McIntosh, The Anti-Social Family (London: Verso Books,
1982), 26.
iii
Bella DePaulo and Wendy Morris, “Singles in Society and Science,” Psychological
Inquiry 16, nos. 2/3 (2005): 57-83.
iv
Pierre Bourdieu, “On the Family As A Realized Category,” Theory, Culture and
Society 13 (1996): 20.
v
Ibid., 21.
vi
Ibid., 26, 22.
vii
Ibid., 25.
viii
Eileen Connolly, “Durability and Change in State Sender Systems: Ireland in the
1950s,” The European Journal of Women’s Studies 10, no. 1 (2003): 80.
ix
Interview with Anna, age 42. This interview, along with 29 others was conducted as
part of a larger study of single women in Ireland. Interviews were conducted by the
author from January 1995 to September 1998; Connolly, “Durability and Change,” 1.
71
x
DePaulo and Morris, Psychological Inquiry 16 (2005): 58.
xi
Ibid., 57.
xii
Anne Byrne and Deborah Carr, “Caught in the Cultural Lag: The Stigma of
Singlehood,” Psychological Inquiry 16, nos. 2/3 (2005): 87.
xiii
Anne Byrne, “The Socio-Economic Situation of Single Women in Ireland, 1989,”
report (National Report, Ireland, 1989); Anne Byrne, “Single Women in Irish
Sociological Writing” in Anne Byrne and Madeleine Leonard, eds., Women in Irish
Society: A Sociological Reader (Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, 1997); Anne
Byrne, “Researching One An-Other” in Anne Byrne and Ronit Lentin, eds., Researching
Women: Feminist Research Methodologies in the Social Sciences in Ireland (Dublin:
Institute for Public Administration, 2000); Anne Byrne, “Single Women's Identities in
Contemporary Irish Society” (PhD diss., University of Limerick, Ireland, 2000); Anne
Byrne, “Developing a Sociological Model for Researching Women’s Self and Social
Identities,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 10, no. 4 (2003): 443-64; Byrne and
Carr, “Caught in the Cultural Lag;” Breeda Duggan, “Single Women” (master’s thesis,
University College Cork, Ireland, 1993); Jane Millar, The Socio-Economic Situation of
Solo Women in Europe (Commission of the European Communities: Brussels, 1991);
Mairead Flynn, “Self-Actualization: A Study of Married and Single Women in the
Dublin Area” (master’s thesis., University of Dublin, Trinity College, Ireland, 1992).
xiv
Byrne, “The Socio-Economic Situation;” Duggan, “Single Women.”
xv
Ibid., 66.
xvi
Ibid.
xvii
Flynn, “Self-Actualization.”
72
xviii
Trevor Purvis and Alan Hunt, “Discourse, Ideology, Discourse, Ideology, Discourse,
Ideology,” British Journal of Sociology 44 (1993): 473-499.
xix
Gillian Dunne, Lesbian Lifestyles: Women's Work and the Politics of Sexuality
(London: Macmillan, 1997), 13.
xx
Anne Byrne , “Singular Identities: Managing Stigma, Resisting Voices,” Women’s
Studies Review 7 (2000): 13-24. (http://www.medusanet.ca/singlewomen/)
xxi
Reynolds and Wetherell, Feminism and Psychology.
xxii
Ibid., 493.
xxiii
Ibid., 496.
xxiv
Ibid., 501.
xxv
Ibid., 507.
xxvi
Byrne, Women’s Studies Review.
xxvii
Cynthia Brunley (1979), Selves, Careers, and Relationships of Never Married
Women (PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 1979).
xxviii
xxix
Byrne, Women’s Studies Review.
Tuula Gordon, Single Women: On the Margins? (New York: New York University
Press, 1994)
xxx
Jenny De Jong-Gierveld and Monique Alberts, “Singlehood: A Creative or Lonely
Experience?,” Alternative Lifestyles 3, no. 3 (1980): 350-368.
xxxi
Jennifer Church, “Ownership and the Body” in Diana Tietjens Meyers, ed., Feminists
Rethink the Self (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997).
xxxii
Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s
Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 48; Marilyn Friedman,
73
“Autonomy and Social Relationships: Rethinking the Feminist Critique” in Diana
Tietjens Meyers, ed., Feminists Rethink the Self (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press,
1997): 43.
xxxiii
Byrne and Carr, “Caught in the Cultural Lag,” 84-91.
xxxiv
Reynolds and Wetherell, Feminism and Psychology, 502, 505.
xxxv
Byrne, Women’s Studies Review.
xxxvi
Patricia Huntingdon, “Towards a Dialectical Concept of Autonomy: Revisiting the
Feminist Alliance with Poststructuralism,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 21, no. 1
(1995): 37-55.
xxxvii
Ibid., 43.
xxxviii
Diana Tietjens Meyers, Self, Society and Personal Choice (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1989).
xxxix
xl
Huntingdon (1995), 43.
Ibid., 50.