FAY­OLA K J FRAS­ER

De­fined as “the legal­ly or for­mal­ly rec­og­nized union of two peo­ple as part­ners in a per­son­al re­la­tion­ship”, mar­riage, in all its evo­lu­tions through­out his­to­ry, has re­mained, in so­ci­ety’s eyes, a thresh­old of achieve­ment for the young woman. De­cod­ing the de­f­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage in the present day re­quires an un­der­stand­ing of the his­to­ry of the con­cept. The ear­li­est doc­u­men­ta­tion of the term, mar­riage, in­di­cates that it was coined as a pop­u­lar term first seen in 1250-1300 CE. Through­out his­to­ry, fam­i­lies arranged mar­riages for cou­ples for the pur­pose of cre­at­ing bind­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic li­aisons. There­fore, from a his­tor­i­cal, or even pre­his­toric per­spec­tive, mar­riage of two in­di­vid­u­als be­came an achieve­ment, and of­ten an eco­nom­ic tri­umph for fam­i­lies.

Shift­ing fo­cus to the present day, mar­riage has changed in count­less ways. Some ways in­clude the sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced in­stances of arranged mar­riage, the ex­pan­sion of the con­cept to in­clude same sex unions, and the preva­lence, and in some sens­es, ease of di­vorce. How­ev­er, de­spite these ex­ten­sive changes, the so­ci­etal im­pres­sion of mar­riage as an “achieve­ment”, that is of­ten foist­ed on­to young women, re­mains a con­sis­tent vein, cours­ing through the an­nals of his­to­ry to the present day.

“So when are you get­ting mar­ried? And hav­ing chil­dren?” A con­stant, per­va­sive re­frain that many women be­tween 25 and 40 are well ac­cus­tomed to hear­ing from fam­i­ly, friends and even ac­quain­tances. Ac­cord­ing to the orig­i­nal de­f­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage as a union of part­ners in “a per­son­al re­la­tion­ship,” the pry­ing eyes and mouths of so­ci­ety stand con­trary to what is, in con­tem­po­rary so­ci­ety, a per­son­al de­ci­sion. One young woman, age 34, in­ter­viewed on the top­ic of mar­riage, said that “as some­one who has a younger sib­ling get­ting mar­ried, there are many com­ments com­ing my way about when it’s go­ing to be my turn. Which I find in­va­sive and rude.” An­oth­er young woman, age 32, sug­gest­ed that “these ques­tions make me doubt my­self, whether I should be try­ing to find some­one to mar­ry more ur­gent­ly.” The ques­tions op­press women’s agency to choose, by im­ply­ing that mar­riage is a base­line, a req­ui­site thresh­old that every woman must be in­clined to cross.

Fram­ing mar­riage as an achieve­ment is not on­ly “in­va­sive and rude”, it is fun­da­men­tal­ly in­cor­rect, and detri­men­tal to the ad­vance­ment of the gen­der.

“When some­one choos­es to ig­nore and side step the fact that I’m well-ed­u­cat­ed, gain­ful­ly em­ployed and fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent,” says a woman in her ear­ly for­ties, “but fo­cus in­stead on what I’m sup­pos­ed­ly lack­ing by not be­ing mar­ried, that makes me feel like a fail­ure.”

An achieve­ment, de­fined as “re­sult gained, of­ten with the use of skill or ef­fort,” is not syn­ony­mous with mar­riage, which is at its core, a sym­bol­ic com­mit­ment to an­oth­er per­son with le­gal con­no­ta­tions for each per­son and their po­ten­tial off­spring. When so­ci­ety frames mar­riage as an achieve­ment, it con­notes that sin­gle­hood is the op­po­site of an achieve­ment, and in­her­ent­ly a fail­ure.

So­ci­ety side­steps an op­por­tu­ni­ty to to ask about women’s re­al achieve­ments, at­tained through skill, hard­work and ded­i­ca­tion in­stead of ask­ing about their im­pend­ing mar­riages, (or com­ment­ing on their lack there­of).

Eight sin­gle women were in­ter­viewed be­tween 25-40, and all eight have at­tained Bach­e­lor’s de­grees. Six of the eight have Mas­ters or oth­er high­er lev­el ter­tiary de­grees, three have am­bi­tions to­wards a Doc­tor­ate, and all are em­ployed (ei­ther self-em­ployed or oth­er­wise). Five of the women have ac­quired prop­er­ty or land, all eight have pur­chased their own ve­hi­cles at some point and can boast of self-suf­fi­cien­cy. All eight al­so share one ad­di­tion­al com­mon­al­i­ty. They have all been asked in the last three months, per­haps in­no­cent­ly, when they’re get­ting mar­ried, or “any hus­band yet?”

“It makes me feel like a bar­ren crone,” one woman re­spond­ed, “I’m not even 31 yet, and the aun­ties’ strick­en, shocked faces when I say I’m sin­gle of­ten send me in­to a spi­ral of ques­tion­ing my self worth.” When asked whether these cu­ri­ous aun­ties ask about her ca­reer, her in­vest­ments, her trav­els or hob­bies, she sti­fles a laugh. “They don’t care about those things, they just want to see you with a ring on your fin­ger and ba­by on your hip.” The ques­tion has be­come a so­cial­ly ac­cept­able rite of pas­sage for the young woman, while it is of­ten re­ceived as a source of em­bar­rass­ment.

A few of the women point­ed to the fact that there are al­so many women who don’t ever want to get mar­ried, and are con­se­quent­ly seen as a so­ci­etal aber­ra­tion. One 30 year old says that “I nev­er sought ful­fill­ment in a mar­riage. I see so much in­cred­i­ble ful­fill­ment in my own life and my own self.”

She ex­plained that while form­ing a part­ner­ship with some­one would be a com­ple­ment to her al­ready full life, it is by no means a nec­es­sary el­e­ment on her life’s jour­ney. The Unit­ed States Pew Re­search Cen­ter pub­lished a study in 2019 con­firm­ing that many young women are be­gin­ning to feel this way. The study, based on pub­lic per­cep­tions of mar­riage, sur­veyed over 9,000 adults liv­ing in the US. Rel­a­tive­ly small shares of adults (17 per cent) say be­ing mar­ried is es­sen­tial for a man or woman to live a ful­fill­ing life, with 54 per cent of adults con­sid­er­ing mar­riage pos­i­tive, but not es­sen­tial.

Pop­u­lar US tele­vi­sion ac­tress, Tracee El­lis Ross, de­scribes the phe­nom­e­non as “so­ci­ety’s ob­ses­sion with mar­riage that is spoon­fed to girls from very ear­ly on.” She says, “I used to put my­self to sleep, dream­ing of my wed­ding.” The “Rich Aun­tie” is a col­lo­qui­al term emerg­ing among young women, and El­lis-Ross is the pa­tron saint of the move­ment. The “Rich Aun­tie” refers to the suc­cess­ful, well-off woman in a fam­i­ly, who is un­mar­ried and with­out chil­dren, of­ten seek­ing to pri­or­i­tize her own pur­suits over the con­ven­tion­al path of get­ting mar­ried and start­ing a fam­i­ly.

Al­though there is ful­fill­ment in both paths, there is, at long last, ter­mi­nol­o­gy rep­re­sent­ing women’s al­ter­na­tives. Re­fram­ing the way so­ci­ety views women on a whole re­quires a fun­da­men­tal shift in the deep-seat­ed ex­pec­ta­tions that women could and should on­ly deeply de­sire to pur­sue a lifestyle that in­volves mar­riage.

“I wish I had known there were oth­er choic­es, not just about how I could be liv­ing, but how I could feel about the way my life was,” Ross said. If we are se­ri­ous about pur­su­ing the ad­vance­ment of the women of our coun­try, a change in the nar­ra­tive is re­quired. This change calls for deep thought and con­sid­er­a­tion be­fore ask­ing ques­tions, read­just­ing the ap­proach, and not ask­ing women when they’re get­ting mar­ried, but in­stead in­quir­ing about what they have achieved and will achieve. It calls for us to give girls the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dream big dreams, not shove me­dia-fab­ri­cat­ed fan­tasies of ro­mance and mar­riage down their throats. Col­lec­tive ac­tion to shift the par­a­digm will mean that our women get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be raised by a so­ci­ety that en­cour­ages them not to dream about their wed­dings, but to dream about their lives.

- Fay­ola K J Fras­er is a pro­fes­sion­al in the in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment are­na. She has a BA in In­ter­na­tion­al (Mid­dle East­ern) Stud­ies and an MSc in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions & Diplo­ma­cy from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.