I had thought a lot about unmarried life during my years as an unmarried woman – which was all during my 20s and into my 30s. I was someone who didn’t have a ton of relationships as a single person – and so I had a sharp identification with singlehood. Rebecca Traister Read Quote
The vast majority of women who marry still take their husband’s name. And I’m not vilifying that behavior! But that’s a pattern where women are truly still taking on their husbands’ identities. Rebecca Traister Read Quote
Up until 1920, women couldn’t vote. Until 1974, married women couldn’t get their own credit cards or, in some cases, their own loans. Basically, the husband’s professional, social, and economic identity covered the individual identity of the wife. Rebecca Traister Read Quote
Since the late 19th century, the median age of first marriage for women had fluctuated between 20 and 22. This had been the shape, pattern and definition of female life. Rebecca Traister Read Quote
Throughout America’s history, the start of adult life for women – whatever else it might have been destined to include – had been typically marked by marriage. Rebecca Traister Read Quote
By the time Clinton graduated from Yale Law School, many people, including her boyfriend Bill, believed she could, and should, embark on a political career. She’d given the Wellesley commencement speech that had earned her a ‘Life’ write-up of her own. Rebecca Traister Read Quote
In 2009, the proportion of American women who were married dropped below 50 percent. Rebecca Traister Read Quote
Being able to control your reproduction is essential to women’s ability to flourish in the United States. Rebecca Traister Read Quote
In some ways, privileged women who are closer to power wind up being able to exert their influence in ways that change public policy in ways that women with less power don’t have access to. Rebecca Traister Read Quote
