Women Are Confident In Their Decision To Be Single - Research Paper Example

Women Are Confident in Their Decision to Be Single Educational Women Are Confident in Their Decision to Be Single Today women have choices. They can choose to remain single, to get married, and to divorce. They can choose to remain childless—whether married or single—or to have children. However, this was not always the case. Women of the mid 19th century had none of these choices. Since women had no means of their own—with the rare exception--, they had to obey men who held all of the resources. Any women who did remain single could not have children, cohabit with a man, and attracted social disapproval and pity. Furthermore, all professions were closed to women. Boys received more education than girls who were excluded from universities and could obtain only low-paying jobs. Consequently, “women had little choice but to marry” (Wojtczak). When they did so, everything they earned, owned, and inherited became the property of the husband. Furthermore, the law assured that the husband had the right to the woman’s body, something the women themselves agreed to in the marriage ceremony when they promised before God and earthly witnesses that they would obey their husbands. It was not until the late 20th century when women were permitted to omit that vow from their wedding promises. It was, indeed, a man’s world. “Every man had the right to force his wife into sex and childbirth. He could take her children without reason and send them to be raised elsewhere. He could spend his wife’s inheritance on a mistress or on prostitutes” (Wojtczak). The heartbreaking case of Susannah Palmer in 1869 illustrates the plight of women in those days. She escaped her adulterous husband who had been beating her brutally for years. Working and saving, she created a new home for her children only to have her husband find her, take everything and leave her destitute. “In a fury she stabbed him and was immediately prosecuted” (Wojtczak). A woman could not get a divorce except in extremely rare cases. Furthermore, until 1891, if she ran away, the police could capture and imprison her. Such action “was sanctioned by church, law, custom, history and approved by society in general” (Wojtczak). Then, in 1857 there came a new divorce act—but it also favoured the husband since he could get a divorce if his wife committed adultery, but she could not get a divorce if her husband committed adultery. Women were beginning to rebel, but this was quickly crushed by family males. Even Judge William Blackstone came to the aid of husbands in announcing that they “could administer moderate correction to disobedient wives” (ibid.). Men were fighting to retain their domination. “As late as 1895, Edith Lanchester’s father had her kidnapped and had her committed to a lunatic asylum for cohabiting with a man. As a Marxist and feminist she was morally and politically opposed to marriage” (ibid.). Baby steps had begun to be taken by women for the right to remain single. Family wealth was passed down through the male line. If a woman received anything it was a very small percentage and upon marriage became the husband’s property. Only women from very wealthy families who had no brothers and who did not marry could become independent. This would, obviously, only be the case in a minority of cases; and being able to be self-sufficient was necessary for women to choose to be single and to be confident in their decision. Ironically, somewhat hypocritically in the midst of all of this male domination and even cruelty at times, there “was the concept of woman as goddess placed on a pedestal and worshipped... She was wrapped by the Victorians in folds on folds and layers on layers as though she were a Hindu idol” (ibid.). The majority of women were, however, working class, who of necessity often began working between the ages of 8 to 12. Through no fault of their own, it was rare for women to be anything other than in domestic service, factory hands, and unskilled labor since they were not only given less education than their brothers, but they were also barred from universities and well paid work. Practically the only skilled work that women could obtain was in the clothing trade, but even that was low paid and low status. Seamstresses, however, in the 1840s fared a bit better. Difficult as it was under these conditions for a woman to remain single and self-sufficient, she usually did not fare much better—if, indeed, not worse-- if she married. If the husband could not afford to have his wife stop working, that is what she did all of her life giving her earnings to her husband and taking only short breaks to give birth. If she was single and there was no other alternative, women resorted to casual prostitution for aid. During the early to mid 19th century the social order was challenged, resulting in low class men getting the vote and black slavery being abolished. “It was in this climate that women like Barbara Leigh Smith began to think that women, too, deserved to be emancipated from their enslaved status” (ibid.). Then there was Muriel Matters in 1908 who was the first woman to make a speech in the London House of Commons. The only way she managed to do so was by chaining herself, along with two other women, to the grille of the women’s gallery. “The following year she flew over parliament in an airship inscribed ‘votes for women’” (The British Women’s Emancipation Movement 1830 – 1930). After the vote was won, Muriel Matters-Porter ran in the 1924 election as a Labour MP candidate. Although she did not win (no Labour candidate won until 1997) and was married, she had a cause and a career. Women were making definite inroads into obtaining more education, better jobs and shaking some male dominance. By 2009, women were “on the verge of outnumbering men in the workforce for the first time, a historic reversal caused by long term changes of women’s roles and massive job losses for men during this recession...At the current pace, women will become the majority of workers during October or November” (Cauchon, 2009). Labour economist Heidi Hartman, President for Women’s Institute of Policy Research, says, “It was a long historical slog to get to this point” (ibid.). Consequently, it has become evident that not only are women now able to support themselves, but in quite a few families they have become either the main—or the sole—breadwinner. The majority of them are certainly not going to come home and give their husbands their earnings, nor are they going to keep on accepting the husband’s adultery because they have no choice. Women with a half decent education and a good steady job had slowly begun to realize since the mid 1990s that they did, in fact, have choices. According to Petula Dvorak (2010), “It continues to be a man’s world, only a little more comfy these days... women in America are just about to make up the majority of the workforce, are dominating universities and, in ever-increasing numbers are the better-educated and handsomely paid half in American marriages” (ibid.). Women now know without a doubt that they do not need husbands to support them. They can, obviously, make financial decisions and they do expect, much to the chagrin of many men, their significant other to do more work around the house. And then came “The Pill.” In 1957, The Pill was released for gynaecological disorders; in 1960, it was FDA approved; and in 1963, 1.2 million women were using it. Although The Pill gave women reproductive control, it had too many side effects; such as, nausea, blurred vision, bloating, weight gain, depression, blood clots, and strokes. “Finally, in the 1980s, the high dosage of The Pill was lowered, and today, women can receive a prescription of The Pill that has as little as one milligram of Progesterone” (The Birth of the Pill). It is said that The Pill changed everything for women because they, like men, were free to have sex whenever they wanted to without fear of becoming pregnant. With good educational and career opportunities and the freedom to have sex whenever they chose, many women focused on those things instead of finding husbands. Some wanted children but no husbands, and there were several ways to achieve that. Their lives were, generally, enjoyable and even envied by some married women, which helped young ladies to choose whether or not to remain single and society to accept their choices. One of the two women that this student interviewed (who will be referred to as Emma for this paper) is 65 years of age and was raised on a mixed farm where any woman who remained single did not do so by choice. Women were expected to complete their Grade six at the one room country school house and, then, help around the farm until a suitable husband could be found. Both sets of parents would together help the young couple set up a farm of their own. Emma, however, did not want that sort of life; and as soon as she was 16, she left home for a town approximately 200 miles from her home town and became a telephone operator, where she worked for two years before moving on to a big city. Here she met her future husband whom she married a year later and with whom she had two children. The marriage was a disaster; and at 27, she was left alone with two children to raise, which she did successfully. She also, through evening classes, got a degree and a good job. Although she has dated periodically, she has had no desire to trade in her independent and peaceful life for cohabitation or marriage. Although married for a short time, it’s as though she never was because her former husband remarried and her children, who live in different towns from Emma, have no desire to visit her. The second single lady that this student interviewed (who will be referred to as June for this assignment) recently turned 30. June was raised in a middle class professional family in a medium size city. She absorbed the importance of a good education from her parents and obtained a Master’s in Social Work. She now has a good job, a beautiful condo and furniture, a good car, nice clothes and enjoys exotic vacations. Between her job, extra curricular activities, friends, parents and relatives, she says that she never has time to feel lonely. June says that she has no desire to have her nice life upset by a husband and/or children. When she wants recreational sex, she goes to a male friend’s place so that she does not encounter any problems in having the sex partner—whom she usually knows quite well—leave in the morning. Both Emma and June are confident in their decisions to remain single. June has received no negative feedback about her choices. Emma, who left her husband in 1973, received some negative feedback for the first several years mainly because of her divorce and single motherhood, but this gradually disappeared, especially once her children were raised and she was alone—and divorce was more common, millions of women were using the pill, and single women, for the most part, were enjoying a self-sufficient and somewhat enviable lifestyle. Certainly society has accepted it. Some women may not remain single all of their lives, but cohabit from time to time and marry in their 30s (e.g., Princess Mary of Denmark, Duchess Catherine of the UK, Chelsea Clinton). Society is accepting of the single life and all its variations. References Cauchon, D., USA Today. (September 03, 2009). Women gain as men lose jobs. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-09-02-womenwork_N.htm. Dvorak, P., Washington Post staff writer (2010, January 19). The Washington Post. More women in the workforce make bigger bucks than husbands. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/18/AF The Birth of the Pill. Retrieved from http://www-scf.usc.edu/-nicoleg/history.htm. The British Women’s Emancipation Movement 1830 – 1930. Muriel Matters:former Suffragette who wanted to be Hastings MP. Retrieved from http://www.hastingspress.co.uk/history/muriel.htm. Wojtczak, H. Women’s status in mid 19th-century England. Retrieved from http://www.hastingspress.co.uk/history/19/overview.htm. Read More