CONSCIOUSLY UNCOUPLED

Single women today have the power to affect change in ways feminist Gloria Steinem could only have imagined when in the ’70s she said, “We’re becoming the men we wanted to marry.” We look at the changing face of the unmarried woman

In an essay recently published by The Huffington Post, entitled “For The Record”, Jennifer Aniston, pushed to the brink by the celebrity publicity machine, set a few things straight. “This past month in particular has illuminated for me how much we define a woman’s value based on her marital and maternal status,” she wrote. “The sheer amount of resources being spent right now by press trying to uncover whether or not I am pregnant (for the bajillionth time... but who’s counting) points to the perpetuation of this notion that women are somehow incomplete, unsuccessful or unhappy if they’re not married with children.”

Aniston was responding to a news cycle dominated by her maybe-baby bump, but it was her mention of marital status that raised a cheer from single women of a certain age everywhere. I know I did. Because for a time, post the end of her first marriage, Aniston was cast as the Single Ageing Woman – a figure often depicted by the press as someone to be pitied or, worse, a Miranda Hobbes-type career-woman cat lady fretting about dying alone, her kitty dining on her face.

But while the stereotype continues to be a favourite of tabloid media for any single woman over 30, the box we were once shoehorned into is busting open as a new generation of females, schooled by a more empowering image portrayed by characters like Veep’s Selina Meyer, challenge the stereotypes. In 2016, single women have more power and influence than ever – more cash, more choices and more freedom than any earlier female generation – and we’re reshaping the economic and social landscape.

In a New York magazine cover story adapted from her book All The Single Ladies: Unmarried Women And The Rise Of

An Independent Nation, American author Rebecca Traister describes the rise of the single (i.e. unmarried) female voter on her home turf as a radical upheaval with massive social and political implications. “Across classes, and races, we are seeing a wholesale revision of what female life might entail. We are living through the invention of independent female adulthood as a norm, not an aberration, and the creation of an entirely new population: adult women who are no longer economically, socially, sexually or reproductively dependent on or defined by the men they marry.”

But while Traister recognises historical social movements that made the current change possible – from the suffragettes of the 19th century to gay-rights movements of the mid20th century – she says she doesn’t see it as a self-consciously politicised event. “Today’s women are, for the most part, not abstaining from or delaying marriage to prove a point about equality. They are doing it because they have internalised assumptions that just a half-century ago would’ve seemed radical: that it’s okay for them not to be married; that they are whole people able to live full professional, economic, social, sexual and parental lives on their own if they don’t happen to meet a person to whom they want to legally bind themselves.”

Women don’t plan for marriage anymore. We don’t expect to have someone support us financially. Nor do we need it; single women are becoming an increasingly significant socio-economic group, particularly in Australia.

NATURALLY “I THINK WOMEN ARE SELFLESS, BUT NOT HAVING THE TIES OF A PARTNER OR FAMILY MEANS GUILT DOESN’T FACTOR IN”

In 2015, the Australian Institute of Family Studies found that women younger than 40 who live alone are likely to be well-educated professionals who earn high incomes. In fact, 20 per cent of these women are in the highest income group. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures revealed 65 per cent of single female householders owned their own home (compared to 55 per cent of single male householders). And Aussie Home Loans reports the number of individual female applications has grown year on year, despite the fact overall share of individual applicants has been declining since 2012.

I was 33 when I bought my apartment, and to anyone else, it didn’t look like much. Tiny and in need of a renovation, I knew I’d have to work to make it all mine. And I had great fun picking out chocolate-coloured tiles and debating Antique White USA vs Linen White for the walls. But the apartment represented something bigger. I knew that, no matter what happened in my love life, my apartment would always be there for me. And it has been. I’ve moved out twice, and moved back in again. Between the arguments and tears, I knew I wasn’t beholden to anyone for security and I could decide to stay or go based on the strength of the relationship itself.

Outside of our personal property portfolios, single women are reshaping the business world, too. Australia is the equal-second best country for female entrepreneurship, according to the 2015 Global Women Entrepreneur Leaders Scorecard. Last year the Startup Muster report found that 24 per cent of Australian start-ups were founded by women, an increase on previous years, and its CEO Monica Wulff says the majority of these women were aged between 30 and 40. While being unmarried is by no means a prerequisite for entrepreneurship, Wulff notes that being single in your thirties can be an ideal time to be dedicated to starting a business. “I think women are naturally selfless, but not having the ties of a partner or family to care for means certain feelings of guilt or selfishness don’t factor in.”

Andrea Myles was 32 and in a “complicated” longdistance relationship when she created her first start-up. She found the more time she spent alone, the more rewarding it was. “It was this amazing time when I was spreading my wings as far as I could stretch them and then noticing, ‘Oh, I thought I could only do this much’ – turns out I could do double or triple that.” At 37, she’s now the co-founder and CEO of the China Australia Millennial Project, has two bilingual masters degrees in Chinese business and culture, lived in China for more than five years and was nominated for a 2015 Telstra Business Women’s Award. She also co-founded the Sydney Roller Derby League. Growing up, she feared being relegated to being a suburban housewife. She needn’t have worried: “I’ve been able to learn Chinese and travel internationally many times. I’ve escaped a very working class, Anglo environment, and those options weren’t available for my mum’s generation.”

Similarly, at 36, Jo Stewart is living her dream life. The Melbourne-based travel writer spends months away on expeditions to Antarctica or travelling across the Simpson Desert, has just signed her first book deal and does charity work, including working with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre Hub. Being single has played a large part in why she’s achieved so much in the past few years. “When I’m in relationships, I tend to get a bit lazy and become complacent with my career and my own needs,” she says. “Sometimes it becomes more about them than me. Maybe that’s because of the partners I’ve chosen, maybe I could choose better, but your priorities do shift. I think, ‘I’m single right now, I might as well embrace all the opportunities that come my way.”

Traister observes that the embracing of new ideas about family and the questioning of traditional marriage as society’s highest ideal is having profound effects on US politics. Yet as single women become more and more powerful as a voting demographic here at home, we continue to be largely invisible within the context of our wider community. In 2014, Dr Jacky Abbott, the then-outgoing Nationals’ Women’s Council president, urged her Coalition colleagues to engage with the expanding group of single women, encouraging them to put issues like “fertility control, equal pay, workplace safety, superannuation, insurance and reasonably priced access to education and services” on their agenda. At the recent federal election, so-called women’s policies were directed mainly at mothers, with an emphasis on childcare and paid parental leave, with barely any other provisions made for single women.

But while politics has got some catching up to do, car companies, travel websites and, unsurprisingly, sex toy companies are recognising the expanding influence of thirtysomething single women. With money, freedom and countless opportunities, it’s a time when many of us can achieve our dreams, on our own terms. As Stewart says: “I see the freedom and flexibility that [being single] gives me, so I may as well make the most of it now.”

“Now” being the operative word. Because as grown women, we’re the ones who can decide at any given time whether a romantic relationship will prove a complication rather than provide clarity, who can choose not to listen to those who throw about terms like “too picky” and, an old favourite, “tickets on yourself”. Aniston may have changed her relationship status to “married”, but she summed it up beautifully for all of us in her perfectly pitched tabloidmedia smackdown, hopefully causing people to think twice before they make similar judgements about future generations: “Here’s where I come out on this topic: we are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child... That decision is ours and ours alone.”