Recently, I had the great honor of talking to Elisa Batista of UltraViolet about the power and potential of single women, and of course my Single at Heart book. In case you are not already familiar with the group, “UltraViolet is a powerful and rapidly growing community of people mobilized to fight sexism and create a more inclusive world that accurately represents all women, from politics and government to media and pop culture.”
Our conversation is available on YouTube. We only had about 25 minutes to get to so many things we wanted to discuss. Happily, Elisa sent me a preview of some of her questions. Here I want to share with you my more complete answers to two of them.
Elisa: Can you talk about why the votes and service of single people in particular are totally taken for granted? Why haven’t we seen political candidates actively court single women as opposed to married soccer moms and Nascar dads?
Bella: In a way, that neglect is a reflection of the broader cultural values. Who is especially likely to be valued, celebrated, and respected? It is married people, not single ones. What is really striking about this is, by ignoring single people, they are hurting themselves – they are undermining their potential to reach many more voters.
It’s not just in politics that this happens. Back when I was looking to buy a house, I went to various open houses. And sometimes the realtor would tell me about a less expensive townhouse, thinking I would be more interested in that than the house I came to see. If they succeeded in talking me out of the house I was actually interested in, they’d get a smaller commission!
Another reason for the neglect is that single women are less likely to vote than married women are. Maybe they vote less often because they are condescended to or completely ignored. So the whole thing can be a vicious cycle – single women aren’t taken seriously by politicians, so they are less likely to vote; and then, because they are less likely to vote, politicians take them less seriously.
Single women are much more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans. Based on their rhetoric, it seems that some Republican political leaders would rather focus on getting single people to marry and hope they will then vote more often for Republicans, rather than respecting them as single people and trying to earn their votes. You can see this in a popular approach to single mothers. Republicans (though not only them) try to push marriage as a cure for poverty, rather than advocating for policies that make it more economically possible to raise kids as a solo parent.
Elisa: Many in our community and our audience today are organizers and activists, who want to reach this constituency. How do we best reach, specifically, single women?
Bella: First, let me say a word about what not to do. My very first publication about single people was an op-ed in the New York Times in 2004, “Sex and the Single Voter,” about the condescending ways that the parties were trying to appeal to single women voters in the 2004 Bush vs. Gore election. One example was what Kellyanne Conway suggested that political parties say to single women to get them to the polls: “Pretend it’s a hair appointment we would not miss.”
OK, so now here are a few things you can do to reach single women:
- Engage them respectfully. You are talking to smart people who know what matters most in their lives, and it is not their hair appointments.
- Learn what matters to them. The many priorities of single women (and men) include:
- Housing that is affordable and suitable – and that doesn’t just mean small apartments.
- Getting paid fairly and treated fairly in the workplace.
- Getting treated effectively and respectfully in the health care system.
- Access to the same benefits and protections that married people get just because they are married.
(A more complete discussion is in Chapter 9 of Single at Heart.)
- If you are Democrats, keep in mind that single women – especially single Black women – are one of the demographic groups most likely to favor you. They deserve your attention! If you are Republicans, do what it takes to earn single women’s votes (for example, by following suggestions 1, 2, and 4).
- Use inclusive language. Think about how often you hear political candidates and political leaders telling you how much they care about “children and families” or “working families.” They do this even when the policies they are proposing are just as relevant to single people with no kids as to anyone else. Why talk as if these people just don’t count? It is easy to use language that embraces everyone without offending or excluding anyone. Want to talk about work issues? Then talk about “workers,” not “working families.” Employers hire individuals, not families. Hiring families would be a bad idea; 2-yr-olds are notoriously terrible employees.
[Notes: (1) The opinions expressed here do not represent the official positions of Unmarried Equality. (2) I’ll post all these blog posts at the UE Facebook page; please join our discussions there. (3) Disclosure: Links to books may include affiliate links. (4) For links to previous columns, click here.]
About Bella DePaulo
