Single Women with Disabilities, Part 2: Guest Post by Jill Summerville

This is the 2nd of Jill Summerville’s 2-part article, “Single women with disabilities: A worth universally doubted.” Part 1 is here. A Woman With A Disability Must Be In Want Of A Marriage A Google search for “How can I build my dream girlfriend?” provides so many options that VideoInk actually ranked the best virtual […]

Single Women with Disabilities, Part 1: Guest Post by Jill Summerville

Jill Summerville describes the many ways that single women with disabilities are unfairly disadvantaged. This is Part 1 of 2. Bella’s intro: The experiences and perspectives of people with disabilities have been vastly underrepresented in writings about single people. I am so grateful to Jill Summerville for all she is sharing in her 2-part contribution […]

National Survey Documents High Rates of Denial that Singlism Exists or that It Is Unfair

Single people are targets of singlism: they are stereotyped, stigmatized, and discriminated against. Research documenting singlism is piling up, but do Americans realize it even exists? And if they are told about ways in which single people are treated unfairly, do they acknowledge that the unequal treatment is in fact unfair? YouGov just reported the […]

Economists’ Explanations for Women’s Occupational Choices Are Also Relevant to the Choice to Be Romantically Coupled

My heart was broken again recently, when I heard the story of still another single person (I’ll call him Sam) who really wanted to stay single but could not get past the feeling that doing so would mean there was something seriously wrong with him. Sam and many other people whose best life may well […]

The Number of Unmarried Americans Continues to Grow, Latest Census Report Shows

On November 29, the Census Bureau released its estimates of America’s family and living arrangements for the year 2021. Results showed a continuation of trends ongoing for decades. The number and percentage of unmarried Americans has grown, as has the number and percentage of people living alone. The age at which people first marry, among […]

What Might Motivate Coupled People to Be Allies to Single People?

In some ways, it has been a good couple of weeks for calling attention to the ways in which single people are disadvantaged. For example, in his opinion piece in the New York Times, Charles M. Blow said: “As a society, we have to start asking ourselves whether it is fair and right to continue […]

Jaclyn Geller Offers 10 Bold Ways Single People Can Be the Change We Want to See

Jaclyn Geller, a longtime member of Unmarried Equality, is guest-posting here to share her bold (and sometimes hilarious) Call to Action for single people who are tired of the pervasive unfairness that advantages married people and deeply disadvantages anyone who is not officially married. Geller, an English professor and author of Here Comes the Bride: […]

Single Men Are Unfairly Disadvantaged in the Workplace

Married men are paid more than single men. That has been demonstrated so many times, researchers have a name for it: “the male marriage premium.” The question now is why. Do married men deserve to be paid more because they are better workers? Or are employers discriminating against single men? Or is it some of […]

Older Adults with No Children: Issues with Housing and Hunger

The Census Bureau just released their first-ever report on older people in the U.S. who do not have biological children. For those of us interested in single people, the report is relevant because 7 out of 10 older adults who have never married do not have any biological children. It is also important because single […]

Everyday Prejudices and Unfairness: The Pernicious Implications for Unmarried People

Photo by Caldera Gem Here at Unmarried Equality, we mostly focus on the big ways that single people are targeted with discrimination, such as the institutional biases that are written into laws, policies, and practices. But the everyday prejudices matter, too. In two new studies, researchers showed how getting patronized, excluded, and unsupported undermines single […]